Local Food and Transnational Science: New Boundary Issues of the Caterpillar Fungus in Republican China (2020)
Di, Lu (Author)
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 35
Pages: 249-267
This article focuses on new boundary issues that have emerged from the encounter of modern science from abroad and local foodstuffs exemplified by the caterpillar fungus in Republican China (1912–49). The caterpillar fungus was believed in premodern Chinese society to be able to reversibly transform from a blade of grass to a worm, thereby crossing boundaries between two species. It had different uses, ranging from a culinary ingredient to a medicinal substance, and in this way also crossed boundaries of identity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, scientific scholarship from Japan began to bring new perceptions of the fungus to Chinese society through translation. Modern science expanded human vision into the microscopic structure of the caterpillar fungus, and deconstructed it into two nontransformable species grouped with other similar species. The Chinese term for it also entered the Japanese language. However, the category of the term was broadened, crossing the boundary between the caterpillar fungus and other similar species, thereby indicating semantic boundaries of shared vocabulary. As local food or material culture in Republican China engaged scientific attention, the caterpillar fungus as a disenchanted wonder of nature sometimes transformed into a scientific wonder, eliciting new explorations within different scientific boundaries. The new scholarship led to tensions and negotiations between domains of knowledge about this organism but would not necessarily drive out the vernacular culinary or medical expertise. The emergent boundary issues overall depict both rupture and continuity in modern Chinese food knowledge.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Di, Lu;
(2012)
Ancient Chinese People's Knowledge of Macrofungi during the Period from 220 AD to 589 AD
(/isis/citation/CBB001200134/)
Chapter
Robert Culp;
(2010)
Reading and Writing Zhejiang Youth: Local Textual Economies and Cultural Production in Republican Jiangnan
(/isis/citation/CBB631363950/)
Chapter
Jan Kiely;
(2010)
Spreading the Dharma with the Mechanized Press: New Buddhist Print Cultures in the Modern Chinese Print Revolution, 1866–1949
(/isis/citation/CBB543696442/)
Chapter
Ling Shiao;
(2010)
Culture, Commerce, and Connections: The Inner Dynamics of New Culture Publishing in the Post-May Fourth Period
(/isis/citation/CBB216434082/)
Chapter
Shen, Grace;
(2014)
Periodical Space: Language and the Creation of Scientific Community in Republican China
(/isis/citation/CBB001213961/)
Article
Hu, Shen;
Li, Zhiping;
(2013)
Heihe Animal Quarantine Bureau: The First Entry-Exit Animal Quarantine Organization Established by the Government of the Republic of China
(/isis/citation/CBB001200172/)
Article
Jia-Chen Fu;
(2016)
Houses of Experiment: Making Space for Science in Republican China
(/isis/citation/CBB064259086/)
Chapter
Elman, Benjamin A.;
(2014)
Toward a History of Modern Science in Republican China
(/isis/citation/CBB001213952/)
Article
Lu Di;
(2019)
Recording Fungal Diversity in Republican China: Deng Shuqun's Research in the 1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB694187998/)
Article
Swislocki, Mark;
(2011)
Nutritional Governmentality: Food and the Politics of Health in Late Imperial and Republican China
(/isis/citation/CBB001212861/)
Article
Sabban, Françoise;
(2012)
Histoire de l'alimentation chinoise: bilan bibliographique (1911--2011)
(/isis/citation/CBB001320879/)
Article
Joshua A. Hubbard;
(2020)
Invulnerable Facts: Infant Mortality and Development in Nationalist Gansu
(/isis/citation/CBB568414717/)
Book
Jia-Chen Fu;
(2019)
The Other Milk: Reinventing Soy in Republican China
(/isis/citation/CBB123708142/)
Article
Victoria Lee;
(2019)
Wild Toxicity, Cultivated Safety: Aflatoxin and Kōji Classification as Knowledge Infrastructure
(/isis/citation/CBB666101881/)
Book
Michael J. Hathaway;
(2022)
What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make
(/isis/citation/CBB565097903/)
Chapter
Stéphanie Homola;
(2013)
La relation de maître à disciple en question : transmission orale et écrite des savoirs divinatoires en Chine et à Taïwan
(/isis/citation/CBB309036679/)
Book
Di Lu;
(2023)
The Global Circulation of Chinese Materia Medica, 1700–1949: A Microhistory of the Caterpillar Fungus
(/isis/citation/CBB827481563/)
Article
Dominic Steavu;
(2018)
The Marvelous Fungus and The Secret of Divine Immortals
(/isis/citation/CBB732903543/)
Book
Yaron Seidman DAOM;
Sean Xiang Lin Lei;
Lois Nethery;
Zac Patterson;
(2015)
Chinese Medicine Liberation: Inner Documents
(/isis/citation/CBB665325494/)
Chapter
Andrea Janku;
(2010)
The Uses of Genres in the Chinese Press from the Late Qing to the Early Republican Period
(/isis/citation/CBB334498242/)
Be the first to comment!