If you find this sort of thing interesting, then strong recommendation for "1493", by Charles C. Mann.
A reference to 1492, the year that Columbus landed in the Western Hemisphere, this book is all about the Columbian Exchange. The effects of plant, animal, and microbial species suddenly flowing all throughout a world that until that moment had quite separate and isolated biospheres.
similar to how tomato conquered Italy, potato conquered Northern europe, dietary stapes which have a much more recent, counterintuitive history than we usually believe!
My favorite is maize, which was adopted in Europe as a staple food but without the means used by Americans to use it properly, so peasants in Europe got pellagra, which in the Americas was never an issue.
Things Chinese consume all the time that they typically don't know came from somewhere else: baozi (came with the Mongols from Ottoman cuisine), chicken (first domesticated in the Brahmaputra/Bengal/Myanmar region), chilli, corn, peanuts, tea (SEA border of Yunnan, very un-Chinese until recently), tomato. The source(s) of initial rice domestication are still unclear, but much of China (north and central China) did not eat rice as a daily staple for a significant part of Chinese history.
Baozi is unlikely to have come from the Ottomans via the Mongols.
The Song dynasty chinese were already eating baozi and writing about it in their books and documents in the early 11th century, before the Ottomans were established or Genghis Khan was born.
And Baozi is just another name for Mantou in ancient China which is a name for the food which is even older stretching back to the Han dynasty over two millenia ago.
OK, maybe you are right but {{citation-needed}}. It seems Wikipedia asserts Song but has no references. As they are sequential the big picture is still similar. Song was very multicultural/pluralistic, even if thry appeared in the Song this virtually supports an import hypothesis.
One theory is that churros came from the fried Chinese doughstick youtiao.
The habit of eating raw fish in Japan probably developed indigenously but many of the words the Japanese use to describe sushi and raw fish came from China which to the surprise of many has a very strong food culture of eating raw fish and meat up till the Ming dynasty in
the 14th century.
Look at what confucius wrote in the book of rites 2500 years ago:
食不厌精，脍不厌细
(you'll not get sick of good food, and you'll not get sick of kuai(raw fish /meat) that is sliced thinly.)
or
脍，春用葱，秋用芥
(kuai, eat it with spring onions in spring and jie in autumn. jie is a chinese mustard. )
The chinese probably adopted the habit of eating raw fish in the past from people from southeast asia.
And while sashima is almost certainly developed indigenously in Japan, the predecessor of the modern Sushi in japan (fish preserved in rice) is most likely developed in China.
Food history is so interesting but largley neglected.
The big one in that list is citrus, which IIRC hails from Guangdong. The Berbers brought citrus to Europe via trading from Persia. The Persians acquired it from China, probably via South Asian seafaring or the Silk Road.
I was reading about this the other day and was surprised to learn that traditionally Sichuan cuisine used Sichuan peppercorns which are unrelated to either black pepper or new world peppers, and evidently have a somewhat different mechanism of action that is still being studied. I've never tried it but it's allegedly similar to the feeling of a 9 volt battery or carbonated drink [0].
I cook a lot of Chinese food, and I've had food in Sichuan province before too - so I eat plenty Sichuan peppercorns and oil (aka "prickly oil").
It doesn't taste or feel anything like a battery, but it is quite unique!
It has a peppy citrus flavour, but also kind of numbs your whole mouth - it might sound odd, but it's really nice when combined with other ingredients.
You should be able to get peppercorns or oil from your nearest Asian store if you want to try it for yourself.
It makes your lips literally buzz [1] (if it's good quality sichuanese peppercorn (huajiao)), I remember reading study while I lived in China that it literally cause movement. Licking battery is petty much salty and you can feel something in your lips, but nothing close to real buzz caused by huajiao.
They are not really spicy, but they create this nice buzz and have very nice smell, for spiciness they need to be combined with chilli peppers (see the most famous Chinese dish - gongbao jiding (incorrectly called kungpao chicken) - chicken dices with chilli, huajiao, spring onion and nuts).
I doubt this piece was signed off personally by Xi Jinping or anything, but all these little details lodge subconsciously in your mind. Like, you might not specifically think of Chairman Mao as a poor rural dweller famous for his love of spice after reading this article, but after reading dozens of pointless details like it you might start to think he wasn't such a bad guy after all.
Some advertisers spend on relevant keywords, others pay for generalized brand awareness. Many do both.
Anything published by a government in a foreign language has an agenda. It's propaganda. In this case, "brand awareness" propaganda.
Maybe the goal is to promote tourism, or to give a boost to exports.
Maybe it's to keep the country/government in the front of foreign readers' minds, to foster a sense of commonality or appreciation.
Whatever. There's an agenda. It's worth discussing and thinking about.
Like with advertising, it's important to know what role you are playing in the publisher's agenda. Accepting the material uncritically is not a neutral position -- it makes you a unwitting player in their game.
You are completely correct that the US does it too, both internally (presidential mythologies, to use your example) and externally (Radio Free X etc etc).
Propaganda is common though. Many companies have their own newsletter and plenty do paid advertising, some in subtle ways. Plenty of scientific research is paid for by companies for their own gain. Authors are destined to propagate their own opinion and mind. That doesn’t however means anything that’s not complete neutral is pointless. An echo chamber is very much like propaganda, few people is going to speak out against the majority. Our training should be to obtain useful information from the massively available information, not disregard everything.
I'm glad you see it that way. My response was so flippant because I do think people often see China as personally run, in its entirety, by Xi. Any news coming out of China, from as grave as genocide to as minor as Olympics festivals, is seen as part of a single plan. The actions of the Chinese gov't and press can be just as much bottom-up as top-down, even if the top takes credit.
I actually do think it’s relevant. They build credibility in your mind space via innocuous stories about peppers, so you’re more likely to accept their articles about more charged topics in the future.
Perhaps. OTOH - looking over Sixth Tone's front page, there are many "Here is a serious problem in China..." headlines. Far fewer "All is well" or "Interesting Story" headlines. And zero headlines about politics or national security issues, for Sixth Tone to be building cred on those subjects.
Sixth Tone represents a sort of progressive Shanghai-based view of China that is more palatable to people in democratic countries than the usual party line reporting. But, to be sure, the level of criticism is still always below the threshold of what the party deems acceptable. That doesn't mean the stories aren't pertinent or interesting, but it's worth keeping in mind that they will only ever go so far in reporting the facts on the ground. You may see criticism of corrupt behavior or generally "uncivilized" practices, but not of the broader party policies that led to the situation. In China, this is the best you can hope for.
And how is this relevant to story about chilli peppers? You all are just feeding troll when you approve pointing out company ownership at story about chilli peppers. Next time you see story about sausages on DW.com I hope you won't forget to analyze how it's site funded by German gov, same with France24 and French gov.
I think this is a weird take. You could analyze every human interest piece this way. Is that what the NYT does with Page Six? I read that and then don't think about the fossil fuel or tech companies' influence on their stories?
Just read a story about chili peppers and don't get all Joseph McCarthy about it.
It's nice to know these things, even if it doesn't necessarily invalidate the content of the article. "The CCP is investing in sharing China's history with Anglophones" is interesting and important to know.
Speaking as a non-american non-asian I think this is very relevant. Southwest china speaks a separate language, and has a military history. I think kumintag (later forced to move to taiwan) and ccp had battles there, probably significant ones but can’t recall details. Ccp had to keep handling unrest until few years after the civil war. So the article saying chili-red revolution is odd to say the least. There’s more, that it relates pepper and peasants. the article also starts off by mcdonalds and kfc, which are not the most high-end food, and also not chinese businesses. As for military history, some of southwest china is mountainous, mongols had a hard time capturing it too. Mongke khan died there, and according to wikipedia, some fortresses kept fighting for a few years after southern song falls. Is the article relating those who fight for southern song to be just McDonalds superfans?!! If that’s a thing! Of course not… but my guess it is saying something, maybe this is an anti mcdonalds ad?! I can’t tell, or care really. I’d rather read from a proper source about peppers than what is almost surely micro propaganda, Even good quality ones.
Don't forget to warn us also about every single article coming from DW.com which is German state propaganda paid by German gov or France24 which is Fench state owned company.
Some China haters must bring their hate even to simple article about chilli peppers, you will find these haters at every article published from any Chinese media.
I lived in China for years and by the end was sick of it, but I am still not that dumb to hate all aspects of China just because they have dumb politicians.
A reference to 1492, the year that Columbus landed in the Western Hemisphere, this book is all about the Columbian Exchange. The effects of plant, animal, and microbial species suddenly flowing all throughout a world that until that moment had quite separate and isolated biospheres.