The Transformation Of Knowledge,industry And Consumption Of Milk In Modern China

In recent years,the academia has explored the development of dairy industry in modern China and the the “modernity” factors embedded in it from the perspectives of multiple disciplines,including industrial economy,animal husbandry economy,municipal governance and advertising marketing.In fact,the dramatic changes of milk in the past 100 years have not only subverted the long-standing eating habits of Chinese people,but also implied the narrative of “hierarchical civilization theory” in modern Sino-Western civilization communication,and the cultural significance of China's pursuit of modernization.This paper,adopting the perspective of cultural exchange history,attempts to reveal the historical process how milk,marginal in traditional Chinese diet system,in the context of globalization and China's modernization became the “perfect food” and one of the symbols of modern diet through the circulation of western scientific knowledge,industrialization of urban dairy business and the popularization of mass consumption.Mild and dairy products,as the daily staple of the nomadic peoples,were marginal food,due to its foreignness and scarcity,in Han diet system in traditional China where agricultural economy was dominant.With the formation of the global economic and trade network during the great maritime navigation era and the changes in productivity caused by the Industrial Revolution,the Chinese and Western mild diet began to undergo structural divergence,that milk and dairy products became the luxury of the upper society in China while gaining increasing mass popularity in Western Europe.As the national crisis growing in mid-19 th century,under the influence of western ethnology,modern sciences and agricultural economics,milk evolved from traditional private cordial to a vital food concerned with the nation's destiny,and modern Chinese intellectual elites embarked developing urban dairy industry.Along with the process of industrialization,the intervention of administrative authority and the rise of modern urban consumer culture in the first half of the 20 th century,the “modernity” of milk permeated in the daily of the public and became a symbol of China's urban landscape,municipal governance and the“modernity” of personal life.Due to the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War,the dairy industry in developed coastal cities moved west to the inland cities.Limited by the wartime condition,the inland dairy industry could not surpass the prewar development in scale,but the symbolic cultural significance of milk was promoted to an unprecedented height,which accelerated the popularity of milk as a “perfect food”in China.The postwar US-dominated UN Dairy Assistance Program reinforced this trend.Reviewing this historical process is helpful for understanding the modernization of China's knowledge system and urban society in the 19 th and 20 th centuries from a new perspective of material culture history.