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What I Have Found Out:
This is a new area of interest that I am exploring. Inspired by my current study on the history of soy sauce, I became interested in the history of soybean as a Chinese indigenous becoming a global industrial crop. China’s food security crisis is best illustrated by its increasing reliance on soybean imports while it was a global exporter of soybean one century ago. The current research and re-cultivation of soybean in China and Taiwan reveal the agricultural and food crisis that Asia and the world is facing with the domination of global capitalist industrial agriculture that prioritizes profit above human health and the environmental concerns. I shall study the growing movement of rural revival in Greater China where agriculturalists and food activists attempt to reinvigorate agriculture and rural life as a way not only to increase domestic crop production and the quality of human food, but also to preserve a culture, a way of life that is the root of Chinese civilization.
What I Have Found Out:
The study and preservation of traditional crafts and techniques for growing crops and for making artefacts and things, are crucial for sustaining post-industrial agriculture and rebuilding cultural heritage in China. Such knowledge and practices, mostly embodied by artisans and cultivators toiling in specific environments and trained within humanistic traditions, provide us with valuable alternatives to the industrial procedures for making things and producing food that aim at productivity and profiteering above all other values, putting the natural and human ecology under stress.
What I Have Found Out:
What I Am Exploring:
Approaches to preserve traditional crafts:
Two observable approaches to preserve or to recreate traditional crafts and techniques.
I have also done work on the history of Chinese medicine and diseases. Medicine and food are often two sides of the same coin, and the crafting of Chinese medicine remains a highly valued living tradition. The traditional conceptualization and treatment of disorders survived serious challenges from Western science and medicine in the 20th century, by adjusting to new concepts and methods to become a hybrid, efficient knowledge and practice. Chinese medicine is also closely linked to charitable movements led by religious and community groups and leaders.
What I Have Found Out: