Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1997

We are What We Eat Cooking Up Hong Kong Identity:A Study of Food Culture,Changing Tastes and Identify in Popular Discourse T he study of f o od — of culinary tradition, dietary rules, consumption trends, and food as linked to cultural i den t i ty — is an i mp o r t a nt area of contemporary anthropological concern. Food and cuisine may not always seem to be an obvious marker of identity — not as obvious as clothing, or festivals — but food clearly plays an important role in demarcating cultural identity. 'We are what we eat' is true not only in a physical sense but also in a cultural sense, albeit metaphorically. We may eat Cantonese, Japanese, or Hakka cuisine to affirm to ourselves who we are culturally, and to explore who we are not. Cuisine plays an impo r t ant role in so l i d i f y i ng our subjective senses of cultural identity and in creating, t h r ough the taste of the present, a nostalgia for a real or imagined cultural past. Profs. David Y.H. Wu, Siumi Maria Tam, and Sidney C.H. Cheung of the University's Department of Anthropology We are What We Eat 23