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Invitation to a Banquet: A Chinese culinary delight

Fuchsia Dunlop divides chapters into courses to explore the country’s food, history and culture

Fuchsia Dunlop is an English-born food writer who speaks flawless Mandarin and reads classical Chinese. Photograph: Jonathan Perugia

Mei Chin
Tue Sep 5 2023 - 05:00

Many of the translations in Fuchsia Dunlop’s new book, Invitation to a Banquet, are her own. For many, including the Chinese, it cements her reign as a Chinese culinary queen. Dunlop is an English-born food writer ardent about China. She speaks flawless Mandarin and reads classical Chinese. For three decades Dunlop has surrounded herself with not just the country’s food but also its people and mythologies.

China is not an easy place to explain. It is a realm of provinces, dialects, dynastic shifts, beauty and awfulness. However, in its history there was an idea that someone who knew the language, ate with chopsticks and was adept with rituals, even if they did not look Chinese, was Chinese. Matteo Ricci was a famous example. In the 16th century Ricci came to China, steeped himself in its customs and became a figure in the imperial court.

Dunlop’s Invitation is an ecstatic compendium of her Chinese romance. Chapters are divided into banquet “courses”. Once upon a time, Ricci urged his Chinese audience to craft mnemonic rooms, where memories were affiliated with objects, into which a countless number could be stored. In Invitation, Dunlop’s China is encapsulated in dishes. From “Steamed Rice” to “Surpassing Bear Paw” countless stories bloom, like a Ricci chamber or a Proust madeleine swirled in a teacup. There are no photos or recipes, only Dunlop’s luscious prose. After all, how can one convey Mrs Song’s geng soup, concocted 900 years ago in Hangzhou on the eve of the Mongolian invasion, or fish shaved so finely that it floats away like butterflies?

Hailed as one of the finest food writers, Dunlop understands that to simply describe food is stagnant. Her style is wickedly erotic. About a cabbage and a farmer: “Reaching out to one of them, he shuffled off its dirty outer rags to reveal a Chinese cabbage of pale, crisp perfection, standing like a Hollywood starlet amid the gloom.”

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Dunlop argues that the Chinese have been constantly creative. For western audiences, this urge can be best understood when compared to the molecular gastronomy of Ferran Adria. “In thirteenth century Hangzhou,” she explains, “you could go to have a restaurant and eat a troupe l’oeil of ‘puffer fish’ or ‘roast duck’ made from other ingredients that imitated their tastes and textures.”

Recently a chef concocted 108 recipes for potatoes, scorned by the Chinese as peasant food. Dunlop, who is of British and Irish heritage, remarks: “It was somewhat galling for a person from a region that considers itself an expert in potatoes, to be reminded that when it comes to culinary imagination, the Chinese will win every time.”

Invitation operates as a fugue because each chapter circles around the same motifs of history, food, people, China and the West, and Dunlop’s personal memoir

The book is not without difficulties. In the beginning Dunlop launches into China’s past, trapeezing between dynasties, which can be challenging for readers unfamiliar with the country’s history. When addressing the subject of contemporary China, Dunlop is a shade too adoring. Blithely, she remarks: “In China, I’ve seen migrant workers on construction sites eating more healthily than rich, middle-class English families.” Finally, Dunlop’s experience has been one of privilege; one wonders whether Dunlop would have been granted the same access had she not been a Caucasian English person with a Cambridge degree.

As Invitation progresses, Dunlop’s China and her themes become more nuanced. For instance, she asks how today’s China maintains its dedication to eating and at what cost? The Muslim communities, whose lamb dishes are so fashionable, have been horrifically aggressed. China is complicated and Dunlop does justice to its contradictions. This is a country where cabbages are king but so are shark fin and bear paw.

Invitation operates as a fugue because each chapter circles around the same motifs of history, food, people, China and the West, and Dunlop’s personal memoir. “A fine Chinese meal is like a musical composition, with its pels and hills, its gentle melodies and rousing rhythms.” Her book begins with eating sweet and sour pork balls in England and closes with chop suey in Los Angeles’s China Café. While one is lulled by her words, it is easy to forget how clever her construction. Like a fugue, her motifs echo and dance us to the end.

Finally, Dunlop makes the point that the Chinese love a laugh, which can be lost in translation. Despite Dunlop’s profound understanding of Chinese culture, the language of Invitation is pure, creamy English charm. About a seventh century BC chef Yi Ya, she writes: “[he] is said to have had a perfect palate ... unfortunately, some sources also allege that he made his own son into soup ...”

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A Dai is the proprietor of the pricey “farm to chopstick” West Lake Restaurant in Hangzhou. Introduced early in the book, he is a dreamer, gastronome and shrewd business man. He takes her for lunch with a local farmer, where she is served a dish of sweet potato stalks. Dunlop swoons and A Dai chuckles. “As far as they are concerned, this is just the stuff they feed to their animals. They are just too polite to say so!”

Dunlop brings a similar verve to the Chinese past. Her historical figures are sadistic and sexy. Characters include the playwright rogue, Li Yu, the artist-gourmand Yuan Mei, chefs and emperors. Philosophers Confucius and Mencius are grumbling and down to earth. Moreover these long-dead figures occupy the same space as the present, as if they were her friends. “Like the seventeenth century writer Li Yu,” she writes, “I dream of crabs, and I dream of them drunken.” In Invitation to a Banquet, Dunlop’s culinary China is a dinner party where, to paraphrase a movie title, everything happens and is relished all at once.

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