What did Western Christian missionaries eat in China and why, for the most part, it was not Chinese food? This study focuses on two groups of missionaries and their foodways: the Portuguese Jesuits (Catholics) based in Macau between the 16th and 17th centuries, and the British and American Protestants in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it aims to reveal what they ate, what they refused to eat, and why. While examining ideological and cultural factors that shaped the dietary choices of Christian missionaries, this talk also engages with enduring Western attitudes, perceptions, and phobias regarding Chinese food more broadly.

Piotr Gibas is Associate Professor of Chinese at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. He received his PhD in Chinese language from UC Berkeley in 2009, and now he is a literary critic with a keen research interest in food history. His book, To Eat the Inedible: The History of Food in China, is forthcoming in 2025. He eats Chinese food, with abandon.

Sponsored by the Chinese department and the Division of Literature and Languages. Free and open to the public.