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So I ordered this as a Christmas gift for them and they absolutely loved it. My son and daughter-in-law especially love Mongolia, and have traveled extensively in that country. They especially enjoy relationships with tribal people there and experiencing what ordinary people eat. I also scanned as much of the book as I had time for myself, and found the cultural stories relating to the recipes as fascinating as the descriptions of foods. It is truly a lovely book, either for 'foodies' or for amatuer cultural anthropologists.
I really like this book. I am a political realist and I believe Tibet will never be an independent nation again but support any effort to maintain identity and culture for all minorities wherever they may be. Ethnic tensions are the blight of all. Very interesting, unique and usable recipes from parts of the world unknown to most people. She said they were Yi and added with a hint of contempt that they only ate buckwheat. I have cooked a few and am very happy with them. An impressive quality product. But I would not go as far to say the Hans are the bad guys.
I suspect they are a little dumbed down to suit the western palate but easily adjusted if one likes a bit more spice and authentic flavours. As for the politics, I don't like mixing politics with food but the authors give us a feel for the identity of these otherwise forgotten peoples who are swallowed up by the enormity of China. I recall when in Yunnan I asked a Naxi lady who were the the people who lived and farmed high up in the mountain villages I could see from down below. Reminds me of how blacks in the USA once were called buckwheat.
What a great book. The photos are wonderful and the recipes make me want to start trying them out right away. I am so glad I got this book.
Beyond the Great Wall is a great book for your living room, but in the couple of months I've had it, it hasn't found its way into the kitchen once.The premise is marvelous: the food and culture of the "other" China, such as Tibet and Mongolia, the people who are not ethnically Chinese yet are part of the country's food heritage. I haven't seen a single recipe that makes me say, "Wow, honey, let's make THAT for dinner." Nothing here is a turnoff, and recipes like "chicken pulao with pumpkin" or "dai grilled fish" (something perch-like with a filling of scallions, cilantro, and red chili flakes) sound pretty good. But if you're looking for a Chinese cookbook full of answers to "What should I make tonight." -- this isn't the book you want. Beyond the Great Wall is a gorgeous volume. I just want you to buy it for the right purposes: armchair travel for foodies, where the recipes illustrate the text rather than dominate it. these dishes obviously are authentic, but they don't thrill me.
The photography of these areas makes me want to book a trip to China immediately, and the food pictures are mouthwatering.But for recipes.
Authors Alford and Duguid have traveled around these regions for decades, and the depth of their knowledge shines.
But I'm happier looking at the photos; nothing makes me reach for my grocery list to ensure I buy all the ingredients.
I can, without hesitation, give it a 4-star rating based solely on its photography and the foodie detail that it imparts.
Maybe I'll eventually try a few.
The essays are outstanding.
They tell wonderful stories about bus rides, about shopping in food markets, about the history of ingredients.
Moreover, the book isn't printed in such a way that I want to cook from it; the font size is small, and it'd be hard to glance at the instructions in the middle of a big wok-stirring session.Please don't let that dissuade you from buying the book.
If you know someone who loves food, this would be an awesome holiday present.
This view is simply quite ignorant. True, clashes take place (a la Rodney King) between the Han majority and the minorities. Aside from some pretty pictures, painstakingly taken by the authors, this so-called cookbook is just a pile of hypocritical ignorance.Since this is supposed to be a cookbook, I shall begin with the recipes. Reading through their experience with "the other Chinese food", I couldn't help but to think that they just made up a lot of these supposedly exotic recipes, using whatever was available in their fridge at the moment.Now I shall move on to the other part. Lest we forget, this book was released only a few months before the Beijing Olympics, at a whooping cost of $70 apiece. As I flipped through the book I kept nodding my head and said to myself, "yup, I have seen this before." So somehow these foods (or people) must have managed to escape the thumb of Chinese oppression.But, in the mean time, there is something fishy about these recipes presented within. True, many of these ethnic minorities in China featured in this book do not share the economic prosperity that the rest of the country has enjoyed over the last two decades.
To add insult to injury, they seem oblivious to their own ethnic problems (e.g., the Indians and the immigrants) back in Canada.To be quite honest, my problem with this book is not so much their "anti-mainstream-Chinese" sentiment; it is their opinion, and I cannot change it. The authors was under the assumption that these recipes are very special and exotic, and Chinese censorship was the only reason they did not reach international prominence. The authors, in their moral high-horse, often referred these problems as "ethnic representation" or "oppression", without having much understanding of the issues. I was not aware that the Chinese and the Mexicans have been exchanging knowledge in salsa making, nor was I aware of any fish recipes in the mountainous regions of Tibet, or in the deserts of Xianxiang. It is now very fashionable, in the current political climate, for us to perceive China as the big evil Socialist machine, in the same way we saw the USSR in the Cold War. I simply think they are shameless and opportunistic, in that they used their mere capacity as travelers and self-proclaimed food writers to assert their naive political views against China in a book that is meant to be a cookbook of "fringe" Chinese cuisine, while comfortably profiting off both sides. If hypocrisy does not describe the spirit of this book, I don't know what will.
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