wp4 final The decline of the local food — Lu cuisine and how to solve this issue
Freida(Fangyu) Lin
Professor Dochterman
WRIT150 Globolazition
04/30/2022
Through the development of globalization, people can easily find different food worldwide, not to mention the diverse food options in China. Eating is not a necessity of life but also brings people joy through its delicious taste and the lively atmosphere it fosters. With more and more choices in food types and restaurants, people prefer to try out novel things rather than the local options they were already familiar with. For example, when people open Yelp to find restaurants to go to in Qingdao, Shandong province, they are offered a wide variety of hot pots, Korean BBQ, Dim Sum, and so on, except for Lu cuisine(Shandong cuisine). Why do people not want to eat at Lu cuisine restaurants? While some people believe that Lu cuisine will never disappear because it is the origin of Chinese food and the most basic home cooking food in northern China, the change in people’s eating habits causes the decline of local food — Lu cuisine. To resolve this problem, the government can make many promotions such as making standards, using celebrity charms in the TV shows, and creating fusion restaurants to spread the Lu cuisine.
For some people, especially young people, Lu cuisine is not their top choice to eat outside because they think Lu cuisine is not popular and fashionable enough to satisfy their social demands. Young people do not want to eat “grandmother cooking” outdoors. Through the development of globalization, China has more and more connections with other countries. Chinese people suddenly get tons of movies, fashion brands, western food, and other popular trends from other countries. With the excitement of new things, people in China tend to taste similar dishes to those in Foreign TV shows. As a result, people prefer to go to western food or Japanese food restaurant rather than eat local food. All those Sushi and Korean BBQ restaurants create desirable moments to share on social media as a sign of being ahead of the trend. Local food restaurant such as Lu cuisine restaurants will lose their consumers over time. Without the consumers, Lu cuisine restaurants have to shut down. The most obvious reference is the shutdown of many restaurants during COVID-19. “Since the industry disruptions by COVID-19, the Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI) estimates that about 10.8 million employees working in bars and restaurants were going to lose their jobs” (JQI). The isolation policy caused a lack of consumers for restaurants, which also caused people to lose their jobs and led to restaurants’ shutdown in the end. If the same situation happens in the Lu cuisine restaurant, it will be similar. In this case, many people do not want to learn Lu cuisine due to the minimal profits and the opportunity to lose their job. We can imagine that people who know how to cook genuine Lu cuisine will become fewer and fewer over a few years. Some Lu cuisine dishes may even disappear eventually.
Nevertheless, some people believe Lu cuisine will never disappear because it has an important position in Chinese food culture with its transition, widely regarded as the origin of Chinese court cuisine. “This cuisine developed in the South and North Dynasty (960–1279), and was accepted as an important style of cooking in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). Shangdong cuisine is representative of northern China’s cooking and its technique has been widely absorbed in northeast China (Okumus, Bendegul, et 3)”. Lu cuisine has a widespread history for years ago. Also, as the earliest major of Chinese cuisine, almost all the other cuisines absorb and adapt Lu cuisine’s cooking methods. For example, soy is the essential condiment that came from Lu cuisine. Nowadays, soy sauce has already become a primary seasoner in Chinese cuisine. If every family is making Lu cuisine for their daily meals, why do people think the popularity of Lu cuisine will decline in the future? However, a person who knows how to cook at home does not mean he is a professional Lu cuisine cook: they typically have many different ingredients and production processes compared to the authentic ones. People need specific standard and detailed recipes for Lu cuisine — one of the essential factors limiting the development of Lu cuisine, even Chinese cuisine. For example, when people learn to cook Chinese cuisine at home with a cookbook, they will always see words like “a spoonful of salt” or “a moderate amount of soy sauce.” However, they do not know what “moderate” means. The unified Lu cuisine cook standard may cause the decline of Lu cuisine.
To promote Lu cuisine, the government should take responsibility for the standard of Lu cuisine, from the recipe to the ingredients. People can use other countries’ practices as precedents. Through the growing interest worldwide in regional cuisine, there are many worldwide famous dishes from the local areas of Italy, a country with a long history of food. Neapolitan-style pizza — ‘Pizza Napoletana’ — is one of these. The Italian government made a series of standards and regulations to facilitate the spread of authentic Napoletana-style pizza. Based on the article Regarding Neapolitan Pizza ‘Pizza Napoletana,’ “as regional foods become ‘globalized,’ there is the natural evolution and adaptation to local tastes and ingredients, but also the desire to define the ‘ideotype;’ thus preserve the original characteristics”(Morris, Craig, and Maria 1). The Italian government tries to keep the original taste of their cuisine and define the quantity of each ingredient in the essential procedure. For example, they made a standard of the Pizza Napoletana’s powder. “‘Common wheat flour’ with the following characteristics: Alveograph W 220–389, P/L 34 0.50–0.70; Farinograph water absorption 55–62%, stability 4–12 min, ‘Value index E10’ 35 max. 60, Falling Number 300–400 s, dry gluten 9.5–12.5%, protein 11–12.5%”(Morris, Craig, and Maria 2). The data clearly shows the proportion of each constituent in the flour, which helps cook worldwide to make the authentic Pizza Napoletana. Therefore, we can taste the traditional Italian pizza in different corners. If the Chinese government makes a standard production process, it will be easier for people to learn to cook traditional Lu cuisine. These people will bring Lu cuisine to their community and spread the culture of Lu cuisine, which will help more and more people to become familiar with the local food–lu cuisine.
Moreover, besides making a standard recipe for Lu cuisine to spread its production, it is also important to raise people’s awareness of Lu cuisine. To make lu cuisine famous, especially among the younger generation, the government can make s series of TV shows about Lu cuisine to draw their attention first and tell them about its food history, specialty, and the spread of the standard. It is not easy to produce large-scale variety TV shows, and the finance or technology support from the government would help. The celebrity generated by variety shows and TV programs is an excellent way to eliminate cultural diffidence. These reality TV shows and the power of the internet will help people realize the tasty and long history of Lu cuisine. Also, the celebrity charm will facilitate people to imitate their idols’ behavior. For example, a famous South Korean reality TV show–Kang’s Kitchen, invite many entertainment celebrities to run a restaurant. These TV shows attracted much attention. “According to CPI rankings released by CJ E&M and Nielsen Korea for the week of December 11 to December 17, ‘Kang’s Kitchen’ earned an overall score of 248.1 points, maintaining its №1 spot from last week.”(Danakim5 1) Kang’s Kitchen became the most famous and popular TV show in a short period of time and was liked by more and more audiences. Kang Ho-dong, a well-known South Korean MC, was in charge of the chef in “Kang’s Kitchen,” making cold noodles from his hometown–Jinju. After the broadcast of this variety show, his Jinju cold noodles became popular on the internet. More and more people started to imitate him to make the same Jinju noodle at home. Similarly, our local government can also use the internet to spread our local food–Lu cuisine.
Sometimes people need to change some flavor of traditional dishes to make them in line with people’s tastes today. Promoting some chain Fusion restaurants is one of the perfect promotions for the government to improve the innovation of cuisines. Fusion cuisine blends the culinary traditions of two or more nations to create innovative and sometimes quite exciting dishes. (Mcmahon 1) People not only can taste different flavors from two or more nations, but they can also see some creative presentation of the food or the decorations in fusion cuisine restaurants. This innovative form of dining will help Lu cuisine keep its traditional flavor and make it more healthy at the same time. For example, people can change the unhealthy peanut oil in Lu cuisine to olive oil, or use the air fryer to treat ingredients that need to be fried. In addition, fusion cuisine will not only improve the flavor of the food itself, but it will also attract people’s attention to this innovative form. “Running Man”, the most famous South Korean variety show, made a lot of creative fusion cuisine of Korean food on the show. “Attention on such fusion Korean foods continued after the broadcast and received popularity. Especially, meshing in with a situation where the focus of the Korean wave is going beyond idols and dramas to Korean cultures; fusion Korean foods had been an issue to rank on the internet search word hit list.”(no.7) Fusion foods became a keyword that draws people’s attention to Korean food and the culture behind it. Fusion cuisine is a good advertisement element to advertise Lu cuisine to the public.
In conclusion, people can introduce fusion Lu cuisine, utilize the internet and celebrities’ charm, and standardize the making process of Lu cuisine to facilitate its spread. However, if we study the deep reasons behind the decline of some local food such as Lu cuisine, it reflects that the people in that religion are not confident in their own culture. Why are Shandong people not confident with their local culture? This is the issue we need to further discuss about,.
Work cited
1. Okumus, Bendegul, et al. “Local Cuisines and Destination Marketing: Cases of Three Cities in Shandong, China.” Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, vol. 23, no. 6, Routledge, 2018, pp. 584–99, https://doi.org/10.1080/10941665.2018.1469521.
2. Sigurðsson, A. (2017). The eight major regional cuisines of China. Retrieved from https://gbtimes.com/authors/152
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4. Morris, Craig F., and Maria Itria Ibba. “Regarding Neapolitan Pizza ‘Pizza Napoletana.’” Cereal Chemistry, vol. 95, no. 3, AACC INTERNATIONAL, 2018, pp. 365–66, https://doi.org/10.1002/cche.10052.
5. Index, Job Quality. “Statement from the US Private sector Job Quality Index (“JQI”) team on vulnerabilities of jobs in certain sectors to the Covid-19 economic shutdown.” The US Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI). Retrieved March 30 (2020): 2020.
5. Danakim5. “Kang’s Kitchen” Maintains №1 Spot In Content Power Index Rankings.” Soompi, 26 Dec. 2017, www.soompi.com/article/1098791wpp/kangs-kitchen-maintains-no-1-spot-content-power-index-rankings.
6. Mcmahon, Mary. “What is Fusion Cuisine? (with Pictures).” Delighted Cooking, 20 Mar. 2022, www.delightedcooking.com/what-is-fusion-cuisine.htm.
7. “The Charm of Fusion Korean Food That ‘Running Man’ Joo Won And Hong Seok Cheon Displayed.” Fashion, Celebrity, Movie & Music | Yahoo Life Singapore, 14 Aug. 2014, sg.style.yahoo.com/news/the-charm-of-fusion-korean-food-that-running-053657425.html.
