Edible intangible cultural heritage : beggar chicken and mushroom oil noodle of Changshu city, Jiangsu province, China

Abstract

In Changshu city (常熟), there exist two special dishes that are born out of the city’s natural setting and its people’s resourcefulness. Given the natural setting of Changshu, the only mountain in the city, Yu Mountain (虞山), gave rise to two special dishes specific to the place: “beggar chicken” and “mushroom oil noodle”. The restaurants near the Xing Fu Temple (兴福寺) are well-known for the mushroom oil noodle, because of the mushrooms grown and harvested in the wild in Yu Mountain. Beggar chicken is famous in Changshu city due to its traditional and unique way of cooking chicken wrapped in lotus leaves and soil, which has been passed down for over a hundred years. Two restaurants in particular, named Wang Si Restaurant (王四酒家) and Shan Jingyuan Restaurant (山景园饭店) still make beggar chicken traditionally and also are in the middle of modernizing traditional cooking techniques, especially Wang Si Restaurant. Today, the skills of cooking beggar chicken and mushroom oil noodle do not disappear in our daily life. They both have their inheritors and have attracted a lot of local as well as food lovers. This paper will first investigate the historical origins, and evaluate their states of authenticity in consideration of keeping up with modern times. Through research, surveys and interviews, cultural values of the beggar chicken and mushroom oil noodle specific to Changshu are defined. By documenting the current situation of cooking these two kinds of food, the problems can be identified and recommendations can be made accordingly. This dissertation aims to find out the problems of the beggar chicken and mushroom oil noodle during their developments in history and especially in modern days when traditional and laborious processes are replaced by machines. The goal of this dissertation is to identify factors that are threatening their authenticities, elements that have remained unchanged through history despite the development of society. By understanding what gives these two foods soul and characters, a proposal that promotes their significance and authenticity grounded in their locale, Changshu, is made.