China and Inner Asia
Chen Huang
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Paul Unschuld
Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany
Hilary Smith
University of Denver, United States
Chen Huang
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Xun Zhou
University of Essex, United Kingdom
Paul Unschuld
Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany
Session Abstract: In this panel, three scholars will reflect on specific historical episodes of nutrition science and common diet in twentieth-century China. Hilary Smith will feature the nutritional debates around rice, and explain how the essential staple grain in history became the target of doubts during the course of China's modernization. Huang Chen will bring up the foraging manuals published in the Great Chinese Famine, and introduce a mass movement on knowing the nutrition and toxicity of edible wild plants. Zhou Xun will focus on the living experience of the Great Chinese Famine from archival and oral history, and reveal the family practice of nutrition and healing as an alternative to the top-down state policy. Together, the three panelists will explore a transitional period when authoritative discourses encountered folk knowledge, and new scientific epistemology of nutrition and health collided with the traditional understanding of foodstuff and wellness.
Virtual Paper Presenter: Hilary A. Smith – University of Denver
Virtual Paper Presenter: Chen Huang – City University of Hong Kong
Virtual Paper Presenter: Xun Zhou – University of Essex