Chinese cuisine has had a deep impact on culinary traditions in Southeast Asia, where the lack of certain ingredients and access to new ingredients along with the culinary knowledge of local people led Chinese migrants to modify traditional dishes and to invent new foods. This process brought the cuisine of southern China, considered by some writers to be "the finest in the world," into contact with a wide range of local and global cuisines and ingredients. When Chinese from Southeast Asia moved on to other parts of the world, they brought these variants of Chinese food with them, completing a cycle of culinary reproduction, localization and invention, and globalization. The process does not end there, for the new context offers yet another set of ingredients and culinary traditions, and the "embedding and fusing of foods" continues, creating additional hybrid forms. Written by scholars whose deep familiarity with Chinese cuisine is both personal and academic, Chinese Food and Foodways in Southeast Asia and Beyond is a book that anyone who has been fortunate enough to encounter Southeast Asian food will savour, and it provides a window on this world for those who have yet to discover it.

"This is a bold project recording the lives of a particular group of Southeast Asians. Most of the people whose biographies are included here have settled down in the ten countries that constitute the region. Each of them has either self-identified as Chinese or is comfortable to be known as someone of Chinese ancestry. There are also those who were born in China or elsewhere who came here to work and do business, including seeking help from others who have ethnic Chinese connections. With the political and economic conditions of the region in a great state of flux for the past two centuries, it is impossible to find consistency in the naming process. Confucius had stressed that correct names make for the best relationships. In this case, Professor Leo Suryadinata has been pursuing for decades the elusive goal of finding the right name to give to the large numbers of people who have, in one way or another, made their homes in, or made some difference to, Southeast Asia. I believe that, when he and his colleagues selected the biographies to be included here, they have taken a big step towards the rectification of identities for many leading personalities. In so doing, he has done us all a great service." - Professor Wang Gungwu, National University of Singapore

This book examines contemporary Chinese transnational mobile practices with special focuses on the ethnographic exploration of the lives, experiences, views, and narratives of the Chinese mobile subjects in three ASEAN countries: Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, and their interactions with the ethnic Chinese communities in these countries. This book is based on recent and updated original ethnographic research carried out by leading scholars in China and Southeast Asia. The work addresses questions of integration and social embeddedness, interrogating the possibility of whether the transnational Chinese diaspora can be simultaneously embedded into two or more nation-states and geopolitical spheres. It contends that in moving in the transnational space, the Chinese diaspora may experience a strong yearning for a cultural home that may not be in one space for bicultural or multicultural diaspora. It also asks whether the transnational Chinese diaspora is motivated to negotiate cultural membership and social belonging in a new country. Shedding new light on the ways in which the transnational diaspora negotiates cultural membership to adapt to situational requirements, this volume is relevant to scholars researching in China studies, anthropology, international relations, and in Asian, Southeast and East Asian regional studies.

With around 30 million migrants worldwide, the ethnic Chinese and the Chinese in diaspora form the largest diaspora in the world. The economic reform of China in the late 1970s marked a huge phase of migration from China, and the new migrants have had a major impact on the local societies (including the ethnic Chinese) and on China. The transnational networks between the Chinese in diaspora and China have become even more significant as China has emerged as an economic world power.

The book contains essays on current issues in arts and humanities in which peoples and cultures compete as well as collaborate in globalizing the world while maintaining their uniqueness as viewed from cross- and interdisciplinary perspectives. The book covers areas such as literature, cultural studies, archaeology, philosophy, history, language studies, information and literacy studies, and area studies. Asia and the Pacifi c are the particular regions that the conference focuses on as they have become new centers of knowledge production in arts and humanities and, in the future, seem to be able to grow signifi cantly as a major contributor of culture, science and arts to the globalized world. The book will help shed light on what arts and humanities scholars in Asia and the Pacifi c have done in terms of research and knowledge development, as well as the new frontiers of research that have been explored and opening up, which can connect the two regions with the rest of the globe.

With case studies from the USA, Canada, Chile, and other countries in Latin America, American Chinese Restaurants examines the lived experiences of what it is like to work in a Chinese restaurant. The book provides ethnographic insights on small family businesses, struggling immigrant parents, and kids working, living, and growing up in an American Chinese restaurant. This is the first book based on personal histories to document and analyze the American Chinese restaurant world. New narratives by various international and American contributors have presented Chinese restaurants as dynamic agencies that raise questions on identity, ethnicity, transnationalism, industrialization, (post)modernity, assimilation, public and civic spheres, and socioeconomic differences. American Chinese Restaurants will be of interest to general readers, scholars, and college students from undergraduate to graduate level, who wish to know Chinese restaurant life and understand the relationship between food and society.

Travelling Pasts, edited by Burkhard Schnepel and Tansen Sen, offers an innovative exploration of the issue of heritage in the Indian Ocean world. This collection of essays demonstrates how the heritagization of the past has played a vital role in processes and strategies related to the making of socio-cultural identities, the establishing of political legitimacies, and the pursuit of economic and geopolitical gains. The contributions range from those dealing with the impact of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention in the Indian Ocean world as a whole to those that address the politics of cultural heritage in various distinct maritime sites such as Zanzibar, Mayotte, Cape Town, the Maldives, Calcutta and Penang. Also examined are the Maritime Silk Road and the Project Mausam initiatives of the Chinese and Indian governments respectively. The volume is an important contribution to the transdisciplinary fields on Indian Ocean Studies.

Sushi, kimchi, baklava, and tofu once seemed exotic. These Asian foods have made their way around the world. But how representative are they of their home cuisines? Asian Cuisines: Food Culture from East Asia to Turkey and Afghanistan covers the food history, food culture, and food science of the world’s largest and most diverse continent, not only East, Southeast, and South Asia, but also Central and West Asia, including the countries that straddle Asia and the Middle East. Contributors to Asian Cuisines include renowned scholars E. N. Anderson, Paul D. Buell, and Darra Goldstein. A glossary provides a quick overview of culinary terms specific to the cuisines. Chapters discuss local ingredients and dishes, and look at the connection between food and social, political, economic, and cultural developments. Each article comes with an easy-to-make recipe to give readers a taste of more than a dozen tantalizing and varied cuisines. This compact volume will be valuable in food studies programs and fills a unique spot on the shelf of anyone who loves to explore the meanings and flavors of world cuisines.

The essays in Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea fill gaps in the existing food studies by revealing and contextualizing the hidden, local histories of Chinese and Japanese restaurants in the United States. The writer of these essays show how the taste and presentation of Chinese and Japanese dishes have evolved in sweat and hardship over generations of immigrants who became restaurant owners, chefs, and laborers in the small towns and large cities of America. These vivid, detailed, and sometimes emotional portrayals reveal the survival strategies deployed in Asian restaurant kitchens over the past 150 years and the impact these restaurants have had on the culture, politics, and foodways of the United States. Some of these authors are family members of restaurant owners or chefs, writing with a passion and richness that can only come from personal investment, while others are academic writers who have painstakingly mined decades of archival data to reconstruct the past. Still others offer a fresh look at the amazing continuity and domination of the “evil Chinaman” stereotype in the “foreign” world of American Chinatown restaurants. The essays include insights from a variety of disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, economics, phenomenology, journalism, food studies, and film and literary criticism. Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea not only complements the existing scholarship and exposes the work that still needs to be done in this field, but also underscores the unique and innovative approaches that can be taken in the field of American food studies.

With culinary nationalism defined as a process in flux, as opposed to the limited concept of national cuisine, the contributors of this book call for explicit critical comparisons of cases of culinary nationalism among Asian regions, with the intention of recognizing patterns of modern culinary development. As a result, the formation of modern cuisine is revealed to be a process that takes place around the world, in different forms and periods, and not exclusive to current Eurocentric models. Key themes include the historical legacies of imperialism/colonialism, nationalism, the Cold War, and global capitalism in Asian cuisines; internal culinary boundaries between genders, ethnicities, social classes, religious groups, and perceived traditions/modernities; and global contexts of Asian cuisines as both nationalist and internationalist enterprises, and "Asia" itself as a vibrant culinary imaginary. The book, which includes a foreword from Krishnendu Ray and an afterword from James L. Watson, sets out a fresh agenda for thinking about future food studies scholarship.