The New Yorker:

The acclaimed Chinese-cuisine chef and writer reflects on stories of foreign travel in China, and what it feels like to fall in love with a place.
five: Exile on Main Street

By David Remnick

In the nineteen-nineties, Fuchsia Dunlop—now a celebrated food writer and expert in Chinese cooking—enrolled at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine, becoming the first foreigner to attend one of China’s most venerated culinary schools. Recently, Dunlop joined us to discuss a collection of books that chronicle the experiences of foreign adventurers in China. She aims, in her reading, “to steep myself in the atmosphere of a place, to understand the context of the food and to help people relate to it.” Her remarks have been edited and condensed.

The English publisher Eland brings a lot of fascinating, forgotten material back into print. Often, these are descriptions of worlds largely lost—for instance, “Forgotten Kingdom,” by Peter Goullart, which is a memoir about living in Yunnan Province, in southwestern China, as a Russian expat in the late nineteen-thirties and forties.

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