Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China [Paperback]

Fuchsia Dunlop (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2009

“Destined, I think, to become a classic of travel writing.”—Paul Levy, The Observer

After fifteen years spent exploring China and its food, Fuchsia Dunlop finds herself in an English kitchen, deciding whether to eat a caterpillar she has accidentally cooked in some home-grown vegetables. How can something she has eaten readily in China seem grotesque in England? The question lingers over this “autobiographical food-and-travel classic” (Publishers Weekly).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Food writer Dunlop is better known in the U.K., where her comprehensive volumes on Sichuanese and Hunanese cuisine carved out her niche and eventually became contemporary classics. Turning to personal narrative through the backstory and consequences of her fascination with China, she produces an autobiographical food-and-travel classic of a narrowly focused but rarefied order. Dunlop's initial 1992 trip to Sichuan proved so enthralling that she later obtained a year's residential study scholarship in the provincial capital, Chengdu. There, her enrollment in the local Institute of Higher Cuisine, a professional chef's program, created a cultural exchange program of a specialized kind. The research for and success of her resulting cookbooks permitted Dunlop to return to China in a more experienced role as chef and writer; that led to this reflective memoir, which probes into the author's search for kitchens in the Forbidden City as well as the people and places of remote West China. One key to this supple and affectionate book is its time frame: by arriving in China in the middle of vast economic upheavals, Dunlop explored and experienced the country and its culture as it was transforming into a postcommunist communism. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“An insightful, entertaining, scrupulously reported exploration of China’s foodways and a swashbuckling memoir. . . . What makes it a distinguished contribution to the literature of gastronomy is its demonstration . . . that food is not a mere reflection of culture but a potent shaper of cultural identity.” (Dawn Drzal - New York Times )

“I didn’t realize what a self-satisfied, Western-hemisphere food snob I was until I read Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper. . . . This is not just a smart memoir about cross-cultural eating but one of the most engaging books of any kind I’ve read in years.” (Celia Barbour - O, The Oprah Magazine )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (August 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393332888
• ISBN-13: 978-0393332889
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #254,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Chinese

More About the Author

Fuchsia Dunlop writes for Gourmet, Saveur, the Financial Times, and Time Out. A graduate of Cambridge University and a fluent Mandarin speaker, she lives in London, where she consults for the city's first authentic Sichuan restaurant, Bar Shu. Her books include "Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook," "Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper," and "Land of Plenty."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and insightful memoir, June 29, 2008

By 

Sun Wukong - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book on many levels. The quality of the writing is a definite step above most books of this sort. The discussions of regional cuisines, culinary training, and attitudes towards food both contemporary and historical are fascinating. This book, however, is about more than food. Ms. Dunlop lived in Sichuan in a particularly interesting time, when rapid changes in the economy, politics, and society were laying the groundwork for the huge economic growth of the late 90's and present. I lived in China for two years in the early 90's (though in a different city from Ms. Dunlop, and I've never met her) and her descriptions of many of the contradictions and complexities of being a foreigner in China at the time are truly spot on. She looks at her experiences with a degree of self-awareness that is rare in books of this sort. There is little romanticism here, and when she does romanticize her experiences, she quickly pulls back and comments on the contradictory impulses she feels. This book richly deserves all five stars. Please note that the one single-star review it receives is by someone who admits she has not read the book and simply objects to the practice of shark-finning. Had the reviewer read the book, she would see that Ms. Dunlop ends up taking a highly critical perspective on many aspects of Chinese culinary practices, including the needlessly cruel methods of preparation, etc. This is as interesting and intelligent a memoir about food and China in this period as one is ever likely to encounter. I highly recommend it.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A delightful & adventerous culinary memoir, September 26, 2008

By 

Darby - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China (Hardcover)

This is one of the relatively few books out there that I can say, without reservation, that I completely enjoyed to the least and last ... even the somewhat whimsical final chapter about the caterpiller.

Others have already reviewed the book in considerable detail, so I'll just add a few short tidbits that stood out for me in particular ...

* I absolutely adore Ms. Dunlop's adventerous spirit. Theodore Roosevelt's famous "man in the arena" speech somes readily to mind.

* I also admire, and heartily agree with, Ms. Dunlop's astute observations regarding certain silly and deeply ingrained western culinary biases ... such as a general dislike or aversion to rubbery textures, bone-in cuts, offal, bitter vegetables, etc. I also share her love for adventerous dining ... and her disapproval of those who conspicuously indulge in endangered species.

* I also deeply appreciate her efforts to not just share her culinary travels, but also her insights, immersive personal experiences, and the socio-political context of her travels ... it greatly helps to humanize the book for the reader. Disappointingly few authors succeed in that vein. Some successful examples (of fully immersive travel memoirs) are Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence", and Joseph Campbell's "Sake and Satori". Both are highly recommended - the latter in particular, for those who enjoy high-brow reading.

My one minor nit with this book are Ms. Dunlop's recipes ... she does a wonderful job in leading up to the recipes themselves in order to give full weight and background to her personal experience and attachment to each (something too few cookbook authors do in their headnotes). However, the recipes themselves are somewhat imprecise in places ... such as omiting the recommended knife-cuts to use (ironic after having learned so many in her culinary schooling), or neglecting to explain some of the more esoteric or hard to find ingredients to her western readers. I also found myself occasionally pining for some of the photographs her memoir mentioned ... none were included.

Highly recommended !

I look forward to exploring Ms. Dunlop's other published works.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A window into a fast-changing China, June 21, 2008

By 

avoraciousreader (Somewhere in the Space Time Continuum) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China (Hardcover)

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A sweetsour memoir of eating in China
Fuchsia Dunlop, 2008

As the title says, this is not a cookbook or precisely a book on or about food, but a memoir of Fuchsia Dunlop's time in China, with the emphasis on her culinary experiences and endeavors. It covers an eventful -- both for Dunlop and for China -- fifteen years, from her first visit in 1992 to one (hopefully not the last) in 2007. Originally a Chinese region specialist for the BBC, she applied for a fellowship to study in China, with an emphasis on minority cultures, was accepted, and in 1994 showed up at Sichuan University in Chengdu.

She rapidly became inebriated with the vital dining scene in Chengdu, and (to hear her tell it) largely abandoned the ostensible purpose of her studies. Fortunately for Dunlop and us, Sichuan had both a deserved reputation for being slow and casual (things were possible for a foreigner there that would not have been in more modern cities), and a rich and highly developed style of cookery. Far from being the simple blisteringly hot excess of chilis that it has the reputation for in the West, Sichuan cooking as practiced in Chengdu emphasizes a careful balance of flavors and ingredients, with hundreds of unique flavors and textures; no more a one-note anvil of chilis and the lip-numbing Sichuan peppercorn than Indian food is a single all purpose "curry powder" blend.

We have a few chapters devoted to her increasing love affair with Sichuan food and life, and her gradual accomodation to the variety of ingredients, from 'offal' to rabbit heads to insects. (I can't help but think her self-description of her state of blandness on arrival is a bit disingenuous -- somewhere near the end, she mentions the English standby of steak-and-kidney pie, which to an American stomach is up there on the grossness meter at least with tripe and liver and the other organ meat she claims to be initially put off by.) And though she does devote, off and on, a few sections to the "Chinese eat everything" theme, it does not seem to me central to her book, and she is clear that it is not universal and the North and West are more conservative in their cuisine. Much more emphasized is the complexity of the food, the many different flavors and cooking techniques, even the wide variety of shapes generated with the simple Chinese cleaver, each with it's distinctive name. Dunlop, her official studies over with, stayed on in Chengdu and enrolled in a full-time course at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine, the only Westerner in a class of aspiring Chinese chefs.

After the success of her first book on Sichuan cooking, Dunlop returned to China and spent time in Hunan, learning another distinct regional cuisine, the subject of her second book. Though overall chronological, and overall concerned with Chinese food, there are numerous digressions ... a chapter devoted largely to fears of the SARS epidemic; one to a trip to a friend's family in "a remote village not far from Inner Mongolia" where the "meals we ate were simple and monotonous;" her travels in Tibet and other dicey regions.

Equally as interesting as Dunlop's experiences are her reactions to them, the story arc of her becoming more and more imbued with Chinese culture and attitude until it is a wrench for her to fit in back in England. She not only experiences, but thinks about those experiences, seemingly with a notebook almost constantly at hand. And thus we feel her dismay when over the short span of a decade or so, the oddly paradisiacal corners of China that she had found, the sort of old-China crowded markets, street vendors and grubby diners shunned by tourists and New-Chinese alike, become overrun with rampant development -- favored markets, restaurants and whole districts vanishing beneath the bulldozer almost overnight, replaced by high-rises and anonymous blocks of flats. Near the end there is feeling of doom and depression, and her originally accommodating attitude is drowned out by a knell of development, pollution of the very foods she is eating (one chapter is devoted to an increasing fear of seemingly every ingredient), and the impact of increasing demand for exotic, wild and endangered ingredients. Then at the end there are two chapters which revive her attitude and our hope. She travels to the source of her treasured Sichuan peppercorns, the particular slopes that produce the best of the best. And she indeed finds another unspoiled (so far!) city that is far off the commercial or tourist tracks, redeveloping in its own middle-path way.

Dunlop may not be immediately likable .. I have the feeling that while she could be immensely charming, she could also be relentless in her goals .. but she is a wonderful guide, probably getting as much under the skin of China old and new as any Westerner is going to, and bringing us along for the ride in a thoughtful, yet personal and emotional, well told adventure.