Food Adaptation and Glocalization:
Shanghai Food Culture
as a Symbol of Food Appreciation
Embedded Files
Even though P.F. Chang’s is a well-known Chinese food chain in the U.S., it was not as familiar to consumers in China. To Chinese people, P.F. Chang’s was just a restaurant that appeared in“The Big Bang Theory,” which only a small portion of the population had watched. Because of the cultural difference and gap in culinary backgrounds, P.F. Chang’s was not perceived by Chinese consumers as a must-try restaurant when it landed in Shanghai, and instead entered the competition in this multicultural city as a unique representative of American Chinese food cuisine. I started to wonder can you really sell American Chinese food to the country that invented the wok? (Meyers 2018) And how does China, especially Shanghai, accept Western food culture and how do foreign restaurants perform glocalization in this region?
As someone who was born and raised in Southern China and came to the U.S. in my teenage years, I found quite different conceptions of food and food culture across the two regions. For my research paper, I would like to explore what food appreciation looks like in Shanghai, China, my hometown, and what differentiates food borrowing from food appropriation on a global level.
It is necessary to conduct more comprehensive research on this topic because it not only constitutes my own cultural heritage, but also depicts the big picture of globalization. Asian food, especially Chinese food, is appreciated by people from different continents and it has obtained a global reputation and acknowledgment of being delicious, special, and embraced by prospering Chinese cultural background. Thus, when it enters the Western market, people pay extra attention to its transformation and adaptation to local tastes and preferences. Also due to political and societal issues, extensions to cultural interpretation were brought into conversation every time that Eastern and Western food cultures run into each other. However, compared to how Asian food enters the Western market, the opposite direction of a breakthrough of the geographical and cultural border was often ignored. As new restaurants or food resources enter Shanghai city and perform glocalization, I can see the local force reacting and interpreting the new food culture in its own way under globalization. I also learned people’s perceptions of fusion cuisine, such as P.F. Chang’s and Panda Express, where the definitions of food appreciation and food appropriation become ambiguous. Therefore, it is important to dive deeper into this topic because the collision and reconciliation between cultures explain a lot of aspects of the globalization process as well as the results of it. In Shanghai, the city consisted of both its Chinese ancient past and its new-born international character, food conveys the Shanghainese culinary tradition and its identity, while food adaptation in Shanghai speaks for the potentials and risks of modern globalization.
From my perspective, food appreciation is a critical part of cultural exchange in shaping the culinary landscape of cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai, and it is a manifestation of the city’s diverse cultural heritage ranging from household dishes to Western fast-food chains. On the way of food borrowing and glocalization, ethnic pride and nationalism values are also integrated to create culinary fusion in fine dining restaurants. On the other hand, with the influence of globalization, there are also complex issues with food appropriation caused by exploitation and misrepresentation of food culture, including commercial motivation and digital marketing approaches.
Table of Contents:
Background
Background
Expedited by technological development, communicational advancement, and trade maturation, globalization has been a popular subject in all types of industries. It is fair to say that the 21st century is the era of globalization. Based on “Globalization over 5 Centuries” from “Our World in Data” database (Fig. 1), there has been a skyrocketing trend in globalization overall.
The chart illustrates the evolution of globalization over the past five centuries, choosing trade openness as the key indicator and defining trade openness as the sum of world exports and
imports, divided by world GDP (Our World in Data, Globalization over 5 centuries 2022). The trend is particularly evident in the post-World War II era and in the 1900s, when globalization has been fueled by improvements in technology, transportation, and communication. Looking into the data frame, one can see that although the world reveals a rapid acceleration in cross-border trading, there is also distinctiveness in the absolute and relative changes of globalization pace among the countries from 1500 to 2019. Across over 180 countries, China has ranked 7th on the relative change of trade-GDP ratio with a 455% increase. The other regions in the top 10 include Laos, Mozambique, and Cambodia from the Third World as well as developed economies such as Spain, South Korea, Greece, and Germany. That is to say, only Romania, China, and Serbia are the developing countries among the top rankings of relative change in trade openness. Moreover, China is known as a manufacturing powerhouse of the world, exporting to 6 continents as the factory, but now China has opened up its import border gate and leveraged its enhancing global political and economic status.
In the dataset “Value of Imported Goods as a Share of GDP, 1827 to 2014” (Fig. 2), there is a steadily growing trend of China’s import ratio. Reaching almost 30% of GDP during the 2000s, the Chinese economy has become more integrated with the global environment and imported goods (Our World in Data, Value of imported goods as a share of GDP, 1827 to 2014 2018).
Combining the two datasets, we can see how foreign firms have and will continue to welcome new opportunities to enter the Chinese local market. In terms of the catering industry, the rising import value means that Western restaurants and food culture have inevitably set foot in the Chinese culinary ecosystem and that food cultural exchange and food adapting are worth conducting research on. Joining the competition in this empire of diverse gourmet cuisines, Western restaurants will have to differentiate themselves while preserving their original exotic culture to stand out among not only all the foreign food chains, but also the eight main cuisines from the local market, each varies a bit in different regions.
In fact, glocalization has gradually become a common practice for the food industry and the key to determine whether foreign restaurants could survive among local consumers. In “The Starbucks Brandscape and Consumers' (Anticorporate) Experiences of Glocalization,” glocalization was defined as a process of how globalization affects people’s everyday cultural life and how “local cultures and the forces of globalization are thoroughly interpenetrated and coshaping” (Thompson and Arsel 2004). It is not just to find a popular location for the restaurant and prepare for the supply chain through local channels, but recreating the dishes from the original country to adapt to the new market, new diets, and new culture that the team of managers and chefs could be completely unfamiliar with. In this way, the restaurants get to resonate with native customers more and show their respect towards the regional traditions. In the article on Starbucks’ brandscape, Starbucks served as a glocalization example with shortcomings. When Starbucks enters a new oversea market, it sometimes becomes the predator and almost shows off its corporate identity by following its branding strategy and opening shops on every block. Compared to local coffee places, Starbucks is often perceived as inauthentic, and profit-driven, even though local consumers admit its convenience and still go there for social reasons.
Another example of glocalization is Subway, who expanded its market to India at the beginning of the 21st century. It succeeded in India by adapting to the new cultural and religious environment. Opening up its Indian market, Subway modified its restaurant ambiance, adopted Jain values, and adjusted advertising approaches and social media marketing strategy according to local cultures (Simi and Matusitz 2017). Unlike where it’s originated from, Subway in India provided more vegetarian options and targeted higher-income level neighborhoods. It also stood against pre-arranged marriage that’s deep-rooted in the tradition with its Valentine’s Day campaign by obtaining a profound understanding of local fast-food dynamics and consumer behaviors. From existing examples, it could be inferred that by embracing glocalization, Western restaurant chains can tap into new Asian markets and build a loyal customer base, while also maintaining their global brand identity.
Western Food as Daily Dishes for Shanghainese
Western Food as Daily Dishes for Shanghainese
Known as the international city and sometimes the “Eastern Paris,” Shanghai is a city built off Western food since the Settlement period. Western food was first used to draw the cultural boundaries between foreigners and locals. But since the Qing period, people witnessed how the introduced food helped cross the boundaries and re-domesticate Western food as tradition (Swislocki 2009). In fact, food appreciation manifests diverse cultural heritage ranging from household dishes to Western fast-food chains in the modern day.
Starting from the most common household dishes in a Shanghainese family, people will find the trace of Western recipes. In “Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai,” Swislocki described Western food in Shanghai as performing two processes of domestication and one of them is the “re-inscription of Western food as a component of a ‘traditional’ way of running a Chinese home” (Swislocki 2009). The best example is Luo Song Tang, my favorite comfort food since childhood. The name of the dish is simply a transliteration of “Russian Soup” pronounced in the Shanghai dialect. It’s originally the borscht from Russia and adapted to the Shanghai region after the Russian Revolution when a considerable Russian population immigrated to the Shanghai Settlement. As a process of food adaptation, Shanghainese modified the recipe from using red beetroots to a local ingredient that was easier to access and grow, which was the cabbage, and added tomato to recreate the sweet taste.
Similar to Luo Song Tang, Shanghainese households make Shanghai Potato Salad as an appetizer for a home-cooked meal. It’s brought to Shanghai by Russian escaped from the revolution and localized derivative of the Olivier Salad. It also leveraged local Hongchang sausage to cater to the customary taste of Shanghai people. Both of the dishes are classic examples of introduced food becoming more common within the Shanghai community. Witnessing the development of Shanghai and how the city embraced foreign culture, Western food has entered Shanghainese households and gradually become daily dishes along history.
Another aspect of everyday Western food is the popular fast-food chain in Shanghai. Fast-food restaurants brought Chinese consumers a new experience of Western culture, from an imitation of the Western world to adopting traditional sensations. From my personal experience, Western fast food has grown to a relatively mature stage in the catering industry in China, and it attracts especially kids, who would often ask to go to fast food places as an incentive after school. Because it is not traditional, introduced fast food is perceived to be more refreshing and high-end than Chinese traditional snacks and fast food that the population is much more familiar with. Thus, it provides not only the new types of food to the consumers, but also brand-new experiences and culture learning. McDonald’s was one of the first fast-food chains that seized the opportunity of entering the Chinese market around 1990s and its largest store was in Beijing. According to Yan’s “Of Hamburger and Social Space: Consuming McDonald’s in Beijing,” “as a new cultural construct, the notion of fast food includes nonfood elements such as eating manners, environment, and patterns of social interaction” (Yan 2000). Even though fast food usually targets the lower-income segments or people who want to grab a quick meal casually in the Western countries, the fast-food chains like McDonald’s represent an exotic, modern, and trendy image that made Chinese consumers curious and excited about. To tailor to the local tastes and food traditions, Western fast-food restaurants also acquire new products that are exclusive to different cities. In Shanghai, McDonald’s has congee for its breakfast menu, something Chinese people crave for a regular start of a day and convenient for the ones who need to rush to work to grab on his or her way to the office. Moreover, Shake Shack Shanghai has a menu item called “Mulberry Mood” in English, but its Chinese name can be directly translated to “Purple of the Magic City”, where magic city refers to Shanghai. The smoothie is topped with osmanthus, a flower that symbolizes the region and originated in drink flavors. There are more examples that prove Western fast food restaurants’ efforts on glocalization and food appreciation.
Nowadays, the Chinese market has fully accepted Western fast food as a major part of the industry and consumers in fast-paced cities like Shanghai recognize it as indispensable after successful localization. Based on data provided by CCA on “Chinese Catering Industry Report 2021,” the online orders among fast food and snacks were dominated by Western fast food/ burger category in 2021, followed by light meals (#2), noodles (#3), skewers (#4) on the ranking (China Cuisine Association and China Restaurant Insider 2022) (Fig. 3). The report utilized backend data from Meituan, one of the most frequently used delivery platforms in China and revealed consumers’ preference during the COVID-19 pandemic. With that many options available in this country of gourmet food and drink, Chinese consumers still chose Western fast food over local ones, which again reflected that Western chains thrived with glocalization and had become daily options for the native market.
Western Fine Dining and Shanghainese Ethnic Pride, or Vice Versa?
Western Fine Dining and Shanghainese Ethnic Pride, or Vice Versa?
Western fine dining restaurants in Shanghai are where modernity and elegance are showcased, illustrating the trendy and foreign style of the city. As a native resident, I could assert that the most local Shanghainese food culture and Western fine dining could almost be described as the culinary version of a tale of two cities. In fact, the distinguishableness between Chinese restaurants and Western restaurants is accentuated to an extreme. When Tuan and his friend visited a traditional water-boiled fish restaurant in China, he noticed that “The restaurant had two Xoors, an upper one decorated in the cool Western style, and a lower one that was much larger, packed with tables and noisy customers” (Tuan 2007). Shanghai has its classic dishes, known as Benbang Cuisine, and the most authentic Benbang dishes are usually served in restaurants on historical streets and residential areas. They are furnished in a cozy style to make you feel like you are at home, with the most basic wooden tables and chairs sets next to each other. However, Western fine dining places are located in more expensive areas, such as The Bund or the financial district. They are decorated luxuriously and plate and serve the food exquisitely.
Looking at the distribution maps below from “Spatial Distribution Patterns and Factors Influencing the
Shanghai Catering Industry Based on POI Data,” we can infer that foreign restaurants are clustered in the fancy districts of Shanghai, while Chinese cuisines are more scattered across the city by comparing map (a) and map (b). The authors proclaimed that “Western food companies tend to be located in areas with higher land prices. Chinese food companies have a greater demand for traffic accessibility. The distribution of dining establishments corresponds significantly to the level of local economic development” (Tang, He and Ta 2020). Therefore, it is reasonable to deduce that traditional Benbang cuisine and Western fine dining has distinctive consumer targets because of the different cultural experience offered. Nevertheless, in the city of Shanghai, those two culinary cultural representatives symbiose well and are celebrated through the reinvention of fusion cuisine.
As Western food was introduced to the Shanghai region in the 20th century, fine dining restaurants portrayed an upscale and impeccable identity. It has been a key part of the Shanghai food industry since then and often discerned as a bizarre and alluring taste. Gang Song averred that “indeed, this defining component of late Qing Shanghai’s cityscape was so powerful that many visitors from inland regions would make sure to visit these Western-style restaurants and sample the Yang taste” (Song 2012). “Yang” means Western in Mandarin. Western fine dining places gained their reputation for providing authentic Yang flavors back then, especially the early ones such as Deda and Red House Restaurant. These old-school Western restaurants still exist and attract older generations of Shanghainese as well as travelers from other regions, but new-fashioned Western cuisines have bloomed on the market and gradually replaced the public preference, adapting to local taste, culture, and supply chain. On the way of food borrowing and glocalization, ethnic pride and nationalism values are also integrated to create culinary fusion in fine dining restaurants.
One new wave of glocalization approach among Western fine dining places is to cherish the Shanghainese culinary cultural heritage by using locally sourced ingredients.
Da Vittorio Shanghai, rated with two Michelin stars, has a dish featuring Shanghainese Yellow Croaker “alla Clessidra,” which is another reincarnation of the famous dish from its Italian original restaurant “Bianco di Branzino alla Clessidra.”
Another example is Heritage by Madison, known for pushing the boundaries between Asia and the West. Its chef reinvented an angel hair pasta dish with wild rice stem, a local vegetable from Shanghai that resembles the taste of bamboo shoots.
Both the yellow croaker and the wild rice stem originate from Shanghai, and both are ingredients that Shanghainese families would use to cook on a daily basis. But even though the cooking process may be similar to the original Western dish, these reinventions of fusion dishes accomplished much more than adjusting the ingredients or changing the suppliers. By incorporating or modifying to local ingredients, Western fine dining restaurants can raise the ethnic pride of Shanghainese customers and it’s also easier for the customers to resonate with the dishes much more than pure Western dishes. When they hear that this menu item is made with familiar ingredients, they would feel that this dish belongs to them, and they are destined to try this restaurant, and more importantly, the restaurant becomes part of the city. This echoes with Swiklocki’s definition of the other process of domestication of Western food in Shanghai. Besides the process of domestication that I mentioned in the household Western dishes, Swislocki stated that the other process is “through the creation of the Chinese- (or Cantonese-) style Western material culture of the fancaiguan that symbolized an idea of the ‘modern’” (Swislocki 2009). The modernity of Western food in Shanghai during the Wing dynasty is now localized into a novel form of fusion food with the influence of food appreciation.
On the other hand, because of the vague border on the definition of those fusion dishes as being Chinese or Western, there tends to be controversies over the authenticity of Western fine dining places and how they should be categorized. As part of the research, I interviewed some Shanghainese students on campus, who have been studying abroad for years and obtained their own perspectives on the dynamics between Western food and Shanghainese culture. Their responses are quite polarized. To quote two of the interviewees, one said “when the typical Western dishes start using local ingredients like seafood from the Yangtze River Delta, Chinese people may feel clicked with the menu and belonged to the food culture," while another student replied that “it's neither Western nor Chinese; trying out those fusion restaurants is like having orange chicken in New York. People should focus on traditional Chinese taste or develop the dish in the way wherever it’s originally from. Selling the freshness of fusion dishes and earning people’s curiosity are never a long-term solution.” Consequently, the glocalization of Western fine dining cuisines didn’t acquire everyone’s approval but it’s normal to hear different opinions with the collision and exchange of culture. Looking into Shanghai’s Western restaurants, author James Farrer described them as “a culinary contact zone for both consumers and producers—a space of stratification and social frictions but also of cultural exchanges among a multicultural cast of actors” (Farrer 2015). Fusion gourmet has its own culinary identity that serves a unique gastronomic experience, and its inventiveness embodies the process of food appreciation taking place in this culturally diverse city and era.
Inauthenticity and the Balance between Food Appreciation and Appropriation
Inauthenticity and the Balance between Food Appreciation and Appropriation
If we are not able to determine whether fusion cuisines are authentic or categorize them as belonging to any country or culture, we should start with the problem of what exemplifies inauthenticity. There are also complex issues with food appropriation caused by exploitation and misrepresentation of food culture, including commercial motivation and digital marketing approaches.
A controversial restaurant is Tou Zao, meaning hot stove in Chinese. It’s a restaurant in Shanghai that serves classic Chinese food in a Japanese omakase style. The food and ingredients are identifiable with traditional Chinese dishes, but Tou Zao presents them with only a small portion of it for each customer. Only two slices of conventional bok choy are served on a delicate plate, the same as the century egg and the Peking duck. It seems incompatible with the concept of those Chinese dishes when people cook it in the usual way, where a larger serve is put in the middle of the table and everyone around the table shares it.
The chef and the owner of the restaurant insisted that this is a Chinese-style adaptation of a foreign food culture. In fact, one can easily perceive it as another form of fusion cuisine. However, the motivation behind Tou Zou is still worth delving into. To have a Chinese omakase dinner at Tou Zou, each customer needs to pay around 2000rmb, which is $400. Furthermore, because of its focus on the form of serving the dishes, it costs an unusually long period of time to finish the whole course. According to a diner, “the whole time seemed to be spent waiting for the next dish, which could take more than an hour” (Tan 2022). The high cost of money and time brought more and more criticism on top of the accusation of disrespecting both the Chinese and Japanese cultures on social media. Research on consumers’ motives for choosing traditional food and European food observed from a questionnaire that “time or money saving had negative direct relationships with consumers’ purchase intentions toward both traditional food and European food in Shanghai” (Wang, et al. 2015). This reflects that Tou Zou is not the typical restaurant that most Chinese consumers will choose because of its downside on time and money consuming, yet its new form of presenting Chinese food still catches a certain segment of consumers’ attention. The restaurant also employed media to promote its unique Chinese omakase style and hyped up the existing controversies to bring more attention to it. In general, the restaurant aims for the group of customers that have the consumption ability that would like to pay the money and the time to try it out. Nonetheless, it’s unclear on its cultural purpose when it integrates the Japanese traditions into Chinese gourmets, but we could see the risk of complex issues of potential food appropriation caused by glocalization and food borrowing. From the example of Tou Zou, one can come to interpretation that the balance between food appreciation and food appropriation is depends on the motivation, where food appropriation is commercial and based on only a purpose of performing yet ignoring and disrespecting the essence of the culture.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Glocalization is a powerful and complex phenomenon as restaurants and food industry enter the Chinese market. When it operates with food appreciation, it facilitates positive cultural exchange and globalization between the local market and Western or foreign forces. Food appreciation has been fused into Shanghai culinary tradition and it’s revealed through fast-food restaurants and daily household dishes. Moreover, ethnic pride is an incentive behind the food appreciation in Shanghai Western restaurants where local ingredients are leveraged to attract native consumers and create refreshing impressions. At the same time, potential food appropriation also exists in Shanghai where the food culture exchange is misrepresented and utilized only as a lucrative tool. Blending the global and local elements, restaurants should understand the purpose of bringing new food culture into the market and where the adjustments and adaptations on cuisines become food appropriation and offend certain cultural values. Through the lens of food, we will witness the economic growth and increasing openness to international background in Shanghai. As the city evolves, Shanghai's unique historical and cultural context will continue to shape the way that Western food is adapted and integrated into the local culinary landscape.
Bibliography
Bibliography
Meyers, Jessica. 2018. P.F. Chang’s comes to Shanghai, but can you really sell American Chinese food to the country that invented the wok? May 5. Accessed March 13, 2023. https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-pf-changs-20180524-story.html.
Thompson, Craig J., and Zeynep Arsel. 2004. "The Starbucks Brandscape and Consumers’ (Anticorporate) Experiences of Glocalization." Oxford Journals 631-642.
Simi, Demi, and Jonathan Matusitz. 2017. "Glocalization of Subway in India: How a US Giant Has Adapted in the Asian Subcontinent." Journal of Asian and African Studies 573–585.
Swislocki, Mark. 2009. Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai. Standford: Stanford University Press.
Yan, Yunxiang. 2000. "Of Hamburger and Social Space: Consuming McDonald’s in Beijing." In The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, by Deborah Davis, 201-225. Berkeley: University of California Press.
China Cuisine Association, and China Restaurant Insider. 2022. Chinese Catering Industry Report 2021. Annual Report, CCBD.
Tang, Jinyue, Yijun He, and Na Ta. 2020. "Spatial Distribution Patterns and Factors Influencing the Shanghai Catering Industry Based on POI Data." Tropical Geography 1015-1025.
Song, Gang. 2012. "Trying the Different "Yang" Taste: Western Cuisine in Late-Qing Shanghai and Hong Kong." Journal of Oriental Studies 45-66.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. 2007. "A Walk in the Neighborhood and a Gustatory Shock." In Coming Home to China, by Yi-Fu Tuan, 9-14. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Farrer, James. 2015. "Shanghai’s Western Restaurants as Culinary Contact Zones in a Transnational Culinary Field." In The Globalization of Asian Cuisines, by James Farrer, 103-124. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wang, Ou, Hans Steur, Xavier Gellynck, and Wim Verbeke. 2015. "Motives for consumer choice of traditional food and European food in mainland China." Appetite 143-151.
Our World in Data. 2018. Value of imported goods as a share of GDP, 1827 to 2014. March 19. Accessed February 29, 2023. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-imports-gdp-cepii.
—. 2022. Globalization over 5 centuries. November 28. Accessed February 26, 2023. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/globalization-over-5-centuries-km.
Tan, Weiyun. 2022. Online sizzles with debate about new 'Chinese-style' omakase restaurant. March 11. Accessed March 20, 2023. https://www.shine.cn/news/in-focus/2203112992/.
Page updated
Report abuse