I've mentioned before that in the pursuit of knowledge, prejudice goes in all directions. Now as then as always, the notion of 'authenticity' has done great and lasting harm to earnest effort and serious scholarship for no other reason than look, mien, or pedigree. It takes some aggressively enthusiastic commitment and dedication to aspiring scholarship and understanding to adequately deflect or overwhelm those biases- coming from those one might seek to teach as much or more as from those one might seek to learn from.
Which is where we run into people like me, who hunker down and do the work while being too poor to go anywhere or do anything but read and research. We also run into people like Fuchsia Dunlop, who dived into the deep end of the practical application side. Her work and efforts are quite familiar to me, and have been for many years- just a day or two ago I put up a review of her 2009 memoir to prime the pump, as it were, for this.
As a writer, her style is shaped by her study- deeply layered with information in a manner like unto poetry, and very much designed to be as informative as possible in accordance with the level of understanding possessed by the reader. A (non-Chinese) layperson would read this book and learn vast amounts; a mainland Chinese citizen layperson would read it and learn no less, but different things at different levels due to cultural background osmosis; I myself smiled as I turned the pages, knowing full well many of the potential battles involved in being the Token White Person trying to be taken seriously as a well-informed professional in certain matters of Asia.
The sections of the book are simple enough, with a Prologue, Origins, Ingredients, Techniques, Ideas, and an Epilogue. Clever structuring of subsections, however, is what places Invitation to a Banquet on a pedestal of excellence. Each one uses as its framing structure a different given dish from Chinese culinary history. This in itself is a cleverly complex decision, emphasizing the notion of layered levels of understanding. Whether it's simply recipes, or branching out to histories, art and culture, agriculture, or more notions besides, the chapters do a fantastic job of sharing the essential while opening many diverse windows of opportunity to explore further, and it does so with fluidity and grace.
While that was a fine self-evident success, a historical analysis also came to mind, and I considered how component parts of the manuscript might have worked as examples of the classical Chinese 'Eight-Legged Essay' format. (I cannot see those words without recalling the class I first learned the term in, and a friend's idle drawing of a pile of grouchy looking pages with spider legs.) I'm still thinking about it, and may yet have thoughts on it, but that's too much for now- that will come in a more in-depth analysis at a later date.
Not only is the manuscript extraordinary, but her bibliography and acknowledgement sections are similarly stellar. Scads of sources in both English and Chinese, historical translations, modern works, familiar and uncommon alike. Then comes the massive list of persons from all parts of the world and all walks of life that helped make her, and thence this book, more clever and comprehensively complete.
Of all Fuchsia's books, this serves best of them all as either an introduction or a capstone.
Read it with relish. Then read it again, and see how much more you learn!
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