Chinese cuisine is often reduced in the West to takeaway staples, but a new book invites readers to taste something far deeper. Fuchsia Dunlop’s Invitation to a Banquet uses thirty carefully chosen dishes—not recipes, but stories—to reveal how food expresses Chinese history, philosophy, and everyday life, from the quiet elegance of a final cup of broth to the prized textures of slippery, crunchy kougan. In this episode, we explore how Dunlop reframes “unusual” ingredients not as symbols of scarcity, but of aesthetic choice and culinary sophistication. The result is a portrait of a cuisine that values mouth-feel as much as flavor, and a reminder that to understand China, one must first learn how—and why—it eats.

https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/08/30/chinese-food-is-more-diverse-than-western-eaters-might-think