Fu Pei-mei as Gastrodiplomat: The Global Reach of Taiwan's Original Cookbook Author and Television Personality

• In Event: Food - Media - Asia - Gender

Abstract

My paper centers on the figure of Fu Pei-mei (1931-2004), cookbook author and television personality in postwar Taiwan, often called the “Julia Child of Chinese Cooking.” Fu was just as popular as Child in her home country, but there the resemblance ends: where Child sought to introduce American audiences to the unfamiliar tastes and traditions of French cuisine, Fu was demonstrating Chinese cooking to a new generation of postwar housewives in Taiwan, for whom her cookbooks became an essential part of the middle-class bridal trousseau. Fu authored more than thirty cookbooks, many of which were bilingual Chinese-English, and was the host of Taiwan Television’s first instructional program on Chinese cooking, which ran for almost four decades, beginning in 1962. Yet the significance of Fu’s cookbooks and television appearances extends beyond the domestic sphere, in both senses of the word. As her reputation grew, Fu traveled overseas, giving cooking demonstrations and appearing on television throughout Asia (including the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong) and beyond (in Australia, USA, South Africa, the Netherlands). This paper argues that Fu's position as a female media celebrity promoting an appealing and appetizing image of Chinese culture abroad prefigures the explicit emphasis in recent decades on bolstering Taiwan's "soft power," or global influence in cultural arenas outside of the military or economy. However, given the entangled political history and historical ties of the ROC and PRC, the intended gastrodiplomatic message of these appearances was ultimately garbled, falling short of target audiences overseas.

Author

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