Chinese Foodways in the Digital Age

Abstract

The first two decades of the 21st century saw the full-scale integration of personal computers, smartphones, online media, data-driven platforms, and other digital technologies into everyday life in many parts of the world. This digital age, distinguishable from the previous era dominated by analog media, provides an intriguing lens through which to examine the shifting landscape of Chinese foodways, an important, complex, and ever-changing facet of world food cultures. As China’s role in shaping the global digital economy becomes increasingly significant, digital technologies have become intertwined with the sourcing, preparing, ordering, delivering, consuming, and globalizing of Chinese food in fascinating and at times confounding ways. Drawing on ethnographic observation from 2015 to 2026 in several major Chinese cities and some rural areas, this article aims to delineate several key aspects of the digital transformation in Chinese foodways to highlight the most salient patterns and trends, from the deepening of human–nonhuman entanglements to the intersection of food and digital media. It makes the case that as the digital era unfolds, information and communication technologies have become an essential part of the production, distribution, representation, and consumption of Chinese food. Starting with a relatively small technological artifact, the QR code, several commonly observed and digitally enabled phenomena in Chinese food practices are highlighted, from the “flow” (of goods and information) to the figure of the delivery rider, and then to the increased prevalence of robots and drones, the last two intersecting with the fast-growing presence of artificial intelligence (AI).