Imagining identity with food : a study of cultural translation in Ang Lee's Eat drink man woman and documentary A bite of China

Abstract

The representation of food is also the representation of hunger. In the modern societies, food is more than a necessity for survival, or a cultural and sociological phenomenon, for it signifies the desire of an individual or a community to stabilize identities –which is multiple, fluid and even contradictory. Traditionally being represented through words and later through images, the subject of food acquires increasing visibility in contemporary Chinese audiovisual narratives. The images of Chinese food, as systems of signification and representation, form a unified and coherent narration that is effective in articulating and fulfilling the hunger –at least temporarily –for a national cultural identity. By assuming identity and culture as in process of making, this study investigates the cultural translation of Chinese food by “Chinese” fictional and documentary films, which manifest the translators’ struggles in-between homogenizing and heterogenizing the national identity during the internationalizing process. To create a dialogue between two types of popular Chinese food narratives, this study compares Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman(1994) with the televisual documentary series A Bite of China(2012).Despite the difference in historical temporality, cultural production and genre convention, this study aspires to connect the two narratives through their similar representational approaches on Chinese food and people, as a way to reveal the meaning-making of “Chinese-ness” as an unfinished project under global modernity.