Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

The motif of 2020 is COVID-19, of which the persistently accentuated culprit has been nominated as Chinese wildlife consumption. Hence, the focal point of this essay is to decipher the meaning of wildness (ye) in contemporary Chinese culture, and the reasons behind clienteles’ fascination. To achieve this goal, first, I trace the historicity of the changing definition on wildlife in Chinese official documents in the twenty-first century, along with the stigmatized and orientalist trope produced by both western and Chinese mainstream media. Those news reports and documentaries used a voyeuristic way to connect all the checkered, unfamiliar Chinese culinary culture to the backward (luohou). Secondly, I attempt to divide the complicated wildlife consumption phenomenon into three layers: as food, as conspicuous consumption, and as traditional Chinese medicine, to seek a disenchantment of ye. Through the reading of viral videos produced by an Internet influencer and farmed wildlife industry owner, Huanong Brothers (華農兄弟), I tend to depict the notion of ye in the lower and middle-class, as a desertion of the tedious everydayness and a humorous visual accompaniment on the Internet. On the contrary, the real, problematic wildlife consumption in sumptuous restaurants advertise ye as a rare, epicurean, conspicuous embodiment, which often remains invisible. Additionally, I would add the ambiguous role of traditional Chinese medicine to the socially and discursively manufactured notion ye. Altogether, these arenas unveil that a reductionist ban or stigmas against ye cannot eliminate the problem and will last perpetually precarious in the future.