HKGS 2009 WE ARE WHAT WE EAT: HONG KONG FOOD AND

FOODWAYS

Second Semester, 2023- 2024

Lecture: Tuesday, 1:30pm-3:20pm, Rm249, Main Building

Tutorial: TBA
Instructor
Dr. Maggie Leung (mmfleung@hku.hk)

Tutor:
Mr. Wong Yat Long Jason (jasonwyl@hku.hk)

Course Description
In every gulp we are allowing a bit of the external world, in the form of food, to gain access to
our bodily, cultural and social existence and change us in ways we do not always know. The
feelings, emotions and memory we involuntarily but actively produced are being inscribed, in
return, onto the individual and collective foodscape of the city through our everyday food
choices and continuous habits and practices. This course examines the food experiences and
practices and their ideological effects that shape diners and their city. It also traces the
crystallization of a conscious distinction of Hong Kong food and their influences among the
residents of the city and overseas. In this course we will explore how the exercise of the right
to the city follows not only our hearts’ but also our stomachs’ desire, and the food for the
stomach is always and simultaneously the food for thought.

Objective
Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this course will explore how food functions as a site
of discourse in the expression of identity as well as the articulation of cultural and socio-
economic differences.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
● consider the idea of “Hong Kong food” as a social and cultural construct;
● identify material and cultural factors that influence culinary and gastronomic practices in
Hong Kong;
● use food as an entry to reexamine Hong Kong history, culture and politics;
● understand the how experiences in the “private” realm such as sense and taste etc. are
constituted by, constituting and reproducing social relations and dominant ideology.

Assessment
● Group Presentation 30%
● Food journal and mid-term report (due 11:59pm, 12 Mar 24) 30%
● Term Paper (due 11:59pm, 7 May 24) 40%
 Group presentation
In a group of 2-3 members, deliver a presentation of your own choice related to (without
repeating) the content of and discussion in this course. The presentation should illustrate key
concepts regarding a food culture with creative examples relevant to the Hong Kong context.
Presenters should critically discuss the topic and show their own understanding and insight.
Each presentation should take no more than 35 minutes.

Food journal and mid-term report

Keep track of your food practices everyday at the beginning of the semester. You can set
yourself in a new food habit or diet (e.g. keto, vegan, consuming exclusively HK products etc.)
for an experiment, or just record every bite you take (e.g. when, where and why you eat; the
ingredient, style, taste of the food and your experience etc.). In your report, explain the design
of your journal (if there is one) and reflect on the content, pattern, structure etc. of your food
practices as recorded in the journal and reflect on your experience in relation to Hong Kong
culture. The report should have 2,000-3,000 words.

Term paper
Write an academic paper of no more than 3,000 words of a topic of your own choice. The topic
should be related to Hong Kong food and culture.

What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is, simply, taking others’ words as your own. It is a form of theft. There are two parts
in the definition: copying and the absence of proper acknowledgement. The idea underlying
plagiarism is very simple: if you appropriate the work of another person, you should give proper
recognition to that person.

In this University, plagiarism is a disciplinary offence. Any student who commits the offence
will fail the subject. The case will be reported to the Faculty without notifying the student
beforehand. For more information, see https://arts.hku.hk/current-
students/undergraduate/assessment/faculty-policy-on-plagiarism.

Course Outline

Week Topic

1 Introduction: The taste of Hong Kong

16 Jan Warren Belasco, “Why Study Food?”
Rudy Maxa, “A TASTE OF HONG KONG”

Part I Sense and Sensibility: Feeling, thinking and living through food

2 “Yum” and “yuck”: taste as a neuro, social and cultural construct

23 Jan Charles Spence, “Multisensory Flavor Perception.”
Pierre Bourdieu, “Introduction” & “The Aristocracy of Culture”

3 Manner: The choreography and ritual of food practices

30 Jan Marcel Hénaff, “Lévi-Strauss and the Question of Symbolism”
 Claude Lévi-Strauss, “We Are All Cannibals”

4 “Taste is conscience”: Food, morality and politics

6 Feb Carolyn Korsmeyer, “Ethical Gourmandism”
Lisa Leung, “‘No South Asian Riders, Please’: The Politics of Visibilisation in
Platformed Food Delivery Work during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hong Kong”

Part II Pride and Prejudice: identity, community and space in food practices

5 Fried rice: Home food and cooking, and the location of Hong Kong cuisine
20 Feb reconsidered
Luce Giard, “The Nourishing Art” (excerpt).
Chan Yuk Wah, “Food Contact Zones and Kitchen Politics: Migrant Domestic
Helpers in Hong Kong”

6 Milk tea: Cha Chan Teng and the authenticity of culture

27 Feb Veronica Mak, “The Heritagization of Milk Tea: Cultural Governance and
Placemaking in Hong Kong”
Nurzawani Shahrin & Hanafi Hussin, “Negotiating Food Heritage Authenticity in
Consumer Culture”
7 Reading Week

8 Sashimi: food, gender and class

12 Mar Kate Cairns, et al. “Caring about food: Doing Gender in the Foodie Kitchen”
Yoshino Nakano, “Eating one’s way to sophistication: Japanese food, transnational
flows, and social mobility in Hong Kong”

Part III Politics and Aesthetics: Everyday food culture and practices

9 “I will have a stroke if I eat again”: Online food culture and practices
19 Mar Tania Lewis, “From Culinary Aesthetics to Phatic Food: Food Photography on
Instagram and Facebook”
Uku Tooming, “Aesthetics of Food Porn”
10 All Day Breakfast: “Artistic youth”, consumerism and gentrification
26 Mar James M. Cronin, “Covert Distinction: How Hipsters Practice Food-Based
Resistance Strategies in the Production of Identity”
Andy Pratt, “Gentrification, artists and the cultural economy”

11 Poonchoi and the invention of “tradition”, “local food” and subjectivity

2 Apr Selina Chan, “Food, Memories, and Identities in Hong Kong”
Arjun Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in
Contemporary India”

12 Street food and the city

9 Apr Krishnendu Ray, “Street-food, class, and memories of masculinity: an exploratory
essay in three acts”
Jason Wordie, “Hong Kong has lost its mojo. We all know that.”
 13 Salted fish: Nostalgia and the dis-appearance of Hong Kong food
26 Apr Catherine Chan, “The Currency of Historicity in Hong Kong: Deconstructing
Nostalgia through Soy Milk”
Blanche Chu, “The Ambivalence of History: Nostalgia Films as Meta-Narratives in
the Post-colonial Context”

14 Conclusion: The taste of Hong Kong: Leung Ping Kwan’s food poetry
23 Apr Rey Chow, “Thinking with Food, Writing Off Center: The Postcolonial Work of
Leung Ping-Kwan and Ma Kwok-Ming”
Leung Ping Kwan, “Tasting Asia” (12 poems)
References
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