From culinary modernism to culinary cosmopolitanism: the changing topography of Beijing’s transnational foodscape

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the early 1990s, foreign foods were reintroduced into the everyday life of ordinary people in Beijing. As the city ascends to the top on the global hierarchy of urban places, its transnational food practices have evolved drastically. Proposing “co-bricolage” as a useful framework to rethink transnational culture, this article examines the changing modality of trans-local foodways in Beijing from the 1990s to the 2010s, and identifies a transition from culinary modernism to culinary cosmopolitanism. Whereas in the 1990s the foreign-local relations were perceived through a structural contrast between modernity and lack thereof, cosmopolitanism of the 2010s is underpinned by an eclectic disposition that considers the global and the local to be affinal and combinatory. The discussion demonstrates the potential of “co-bricolage” to historicize the global-local processes move beyond the dialectical model for understanding trans-local connections and dynamics.