In her introduction to a collection of Karl Marx’s newspaper dispatches on China, Dona Torr conceived a charming fantasy in which Marx speculates that
When our European reactionaries have to take refuge in Asia and at last reach the Great Wall of China, guarding the very hearth of reactionary conservatism, they may find inscribed above its gates:—“Chinese Republic. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”1
It is better not to be in Shanghai during a heat wave. I was there during the first week in September when a heat wave struck, the hottest September day in 48 years: 87 degrees at night and as humid as a steam bath. Schools closed, as did many museums, which lacked air-conditioning. In one small museum, the former residence of Zhou Enlai, I was followed from room to room by an attendant with an electric fan. At night, in the old neighborhoods of Nantao, or what used to be the walled Chinese City, families slept in the streets, stretched out half naked on bamboo chairs.
Many Americans think they know something about Chinese food. But very few know anything about food in China, about the ways in which it is grown, stored, distributed, eaten, and wasted, about its effects on the country’s politics, and about its importance to the rest of the world.
