The Chinese Terroir

The Chinese Terroir: How the cutting-edge of food returned to rural areas

The tremendous pace of the industrialisation of China has been accompanied by huge pressures to feed a growing population, not least the influx of people to urban centres across the country. The sheer scale of the demand, coupled with the narrative of progress that has underpinned much of the transformation of China, goes some way to explaining the role and importance that processed foods have had in the recent past. From a manufacturing point of view, processed foods allows China to meet the numbers required; but above and beyond that, processed food has come to represent progress – it is modern, clean and symbolises success in many ways.

In contrast, more traditional forms of food had perceptually become far less desirable: they are more readily associated with rural areas, traditional and arguably ‘backward-looking’ customs and ingredients. However, of late there has been a counter-trend that has been emerging, in particular amongst the rising middle-classes in urban centres:  a partial return to this more traditional and country-style eating.

This has been driven by a variety of factors: there has been a renewed awareness of and interest in the quality of foods due to some recent food scares, with people keen to know more about provenance and ingredients. In some of the bigger and more affluent cities, restaurateurs have found a niche in serving dishes made up of high quality ingredients, with very strict sourcing standards. To be able to guarantee the supply chain, they have been working with and in some cases even investing in small scale local farms. Interestingly, this has given a new lease of life to small and specialised producers of things such as cha you, commonly known as tea seed oil, which were becoming increasingly unprofitable and very cost ineffective versus large scale producers.

To be sure, this is the preserve of the few who are fortunate enough to have the disposable income to afford to think about food and well-being in this way, notably the urban middle classes, who are a growing portion of society. However, this trend connects back to a centuries old, if not millennial respect for and concern with food as a key element in determining well-being in Chinese society, both from a health and a social perspective. As such, as wealth spreads more throughout Chinese society, this trend is bound to have more traction and spread considerably.

Chinese Terroir – one to watch…

This post was written by Edny Tappy, Flamingo London

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 8:48 pm. It is filed under Asia, China, Geography, Retail and tagged with featured, food, luxury, Retail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.