After demystifying Sichuan food for Westerners, British author finds audience in China

Fuchsia Dunlop, a James Beard Award winner, has written a series of books on Chinese cuisine, and now one has finally been published in mainland China

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Fuchsia Dunlop in the kitchen of a farmer’s home in Hunan province. Photo: Handout

Published: 11:00am, 14 Oct 2018Updated: 7:21am, 15 Oct 2018

The award-winning British writer who spent two decades researching and writing about Chinese food for English readers has brought her book to China, and it is garnering positive reviews as it offers a foreigner’s perspective on the country’s cuisine culture.

Fuchsia Dunlop, who said her mission was to promote Chinese food to the world, has recently published a Chinese-language edition of her widely acclaimed work Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. It is her first publication in mainland China.

Dunlop, a native of Oxford, England, became attracted to Sichuan food in the mid-1990s when she was a student at China’s Sichuan University. She is a four-time winner of the prestigious James Beard Award for her writing, and was a nominee for the book’s original English-language version, which was published 10 years ago.

The Sichuan dish mao xue wang, cooked by Dunlop. Photo: Handout

“The response from China is amazing, especially in Sichuan,” she said. “It seems many people are reading it and writing comments online.”

“It’s wonderful because I never expected it to be read in China and in Chinese because it is originally written in English,” she said.