Sites of Consumption: Food and Bodies in Asian Urban Spaces

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

This panel focuses on the dynamic relationships among food, urban space and bodies in Asian cityscapes. Although tourism bureaus emphasize street food as the quintessential Asian sensory experience, we locate the preparation and consumption of food in a range of alternative sites made possible by the convergence of urban densities and economic development. Our papers examine representations of food and eating in both real and imagined spaces, including Shenzhen restaurants in a French-Canadian graphic novel by Guy Delisle, a woman-friendly restaurant/bar in Tokyo owned by television screenwriter Mukōda Kuniko, a high-rise in Seoul envisioned by Korean director Chul-Soo Park, and a television studio in Taipei, home to Fu Pei-mei’s long-running cooking program. These sites hint at the fragmented urban experiences of eating, with diners not gathered in a commensal meal around the family dinner table, but engaged as individual foreign travelers, apartment dwellers, restaurant diners and television viewers.

Several questions animate our conversation: How are urban sites infused with literal or suggested theatricality, underlining the preparation and consumption of food as a performative activity? How does eating in these places suggest boundaries, real or imagined, about intimacy and privacy, hygiene and cleanliness, local and foreign selves? How does food affect the way bodies inhabit urban interiors and exteriors, cross semi-public boundaries, or interact with other bodies, both real and virtual? How are these spatial dimensions inflected by gendered identities, with women operating not only as cooks, servers and diners, but also of entrepreneurs, entertainers, performers, nurturers, torturers, and educators?

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Michelle Tien King, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Chair

• Michelle Tien King, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Individual Presentations

• Cooking Up the Middle-Class Housewife: "Fu Pei-mei Time" on Taiwan Television - Michelle Tien King, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Women Drink Too: Gender Politics of Mukōda Kuniko and Kazuko’s “Mamaya” - Satoko Kakihara, California State University, Fullerton

• The Culinary and Comic Spaces of Guy Delisle’s "Shenzhen" - Michelle E. Bloom, University of California, Riverside

• Psychological Entrapment and Culinary Combat in Chul-Soo Park's "301/302" - Diane Carson, St. Louis Community College