港大中文學院

2024/25 School of Chinese Research Student Seminar

席前洋味：明清時期的西方飲食文化

Foreign Tastes at the Dining Table: Western Food Culture in Ming-Qing China

Abstract:

近期學界強調全球史、新文化史的範式轉向，飲食也成為歷史、文化研究的重要切入點。以往學者因中文及外文史料較多的原因，大多關注鴉片戰爭後在通商口岸出現的西餐風尚及中西飲食文化交流，但卻忽略了從晚明至清中葉的兩百年間，西方飲食文化已被引介到中國並持續傳播，中國人也逐漸累積了對西方飲食的認識和經驗。

本次報告將重新梳理各類相關史料，聚焦五大主題——早期西洋人用餐儀式、天主教的齋戒、西洋葡萄酒與朱古力、西洋花露水、廣州一口通商體制下的西餐，以呈現鴉片戰爭前西方飲食傳播及接受的複雜面貌，其過程也伴隨著中國傳統與外來文化的互動，既有融合也有排斥，在飲食文化交流的層面展示出「我者」與「他者」的身份建構。

Recently, academia has emphasized the paradigm shift in “global history” and “new cultural history”, and food has also become an important entry point for historical and cultural studies. In the past, due to the abundance of Chinese and foreign historical sources, scholars mostly focused on the Western food fad that emerged in the treaty ports after the Opium War and the exchanges between Chinese and Western culinary traditions, but they neglected the fact that Western food culture had already been introduced to China and continued to spread during the two hundred years from the late-Ming to the mid-Qing periods. Chinese people had gradually accumulated knowledge and experience of Western food.

This presentation will re-examine various relevant historical sources and focus on five major themes – early Western dining manners, Catholic fasting, Western wine and chocolate, Western Florida water, and Western cuisine through the Canton System period, to present the complex picture of the spread and acceptance of Western food before the Opium War. The process was also accompanied by the interaction between Chinese traditions and foreign culture, featuring both integration and rejection, by which we uncover the identity construction of “self” and “other” in the midst of food culture exchanges.