The Food of China

To feed a quarter of the world’s population on only seven percent of the world’s cultivated land and at the same time to have developed a renowned cuisine is perhaps the most exemplary achievement of the Chinese people. What accounts for their success? And what can be learned from it in this age of widespread hunger? E.N. Anderson’s comprehensive, entertaining historical and ethnographic account of Chinese food from the Bronze Age to the twentieth century shows how food has been central to Chinese governmental policies, religious rituals, and health practices from earliest times.