Research On Highland Barley–Made Zanba And Its Cultural Meanings

This dissertation studies Tibetan food culture by taking zanba made of highland barley as a research object,and explores zanba’s cultural characteristics,value and significance through field observation from the perspective of dietetic anthropology.It focuses on how Tibetans employ their internal knowledge system of highland barley zanba to understand and adjust their relationship between their natural environment and their cultural one.This paper attempts to complete the writing of a food ethnography through a disclosure of their local knowledge on and a "deep description" of highland barley Zanba in terms of the author’s empirical and native experience.Meanwhile,starting from the case study of zanba,the paper explores an overall research framework of Tibetan traditional diet culture and its routine in the process of modernization,and tries to have a dialogue with various research paradigms in cultural ecology,symbolic anthropology,and so on.So far around the Tibetan area Tibetans have completely preserved traditional cultural forms centering on highland barley Zanba’s cooking skills,institutions and beliefs.From them the characteristics of their diet culture can be drawn: single ingredients,simple cooking and large-scale possessing.Beneath these simple and practical forms,there is more of civilization index in the human spirit and a corresponding set of cultural significance system.The paper combs Tibetans’ cognition of natural settings where highland barley grows and the acquisition process of its raw material,describes its processing,eating and dietary regimen,focuses on its symbolic significance used as food in various ceremonies in different spaces,and explores its sensory,memory and self-identity functions as Tibetans’ main food,as well as its current situation in modernity practice and its possible future trend.The main ideas of the dissertation can be summarized as follows:First,the environment where crops grow as raw material of food determines people’s livelihood mode and diet form.In other words,the environment,natural,geographic,ecological and cultural,is the main factors that determine diet culture.Therefore,if one wants to have an overall grasp of highland barley zanba culture,he should look at it naturally,geographically,ecologically and culturally,and carry out a full exploration of its dietary practice in methodology.Second,zanba serves as a biological nutritional need and a spiritual need.These two needs can be mutually transformed and run through all aspects of Tibetan culture,making Tibetans have a habitual loyalty to zanba,a link to maintain the unity of Tibetan traditional culture.Thirdly,in the interaction with highland barley Zanba and the adjustment to their particular environment in the Qinghai Tibet Plateau,Tibetans make their foods part of the symbolic system through correspondence of foods with certain symbols in dietary culture,thus their foods become codes to decipher their culture and play an intermediary role between them and their environment in a wide range of time and space.Different cultures give different meanings to food with eternal functions.People living in Tibetan culture develop the cognition of their natural and cultural environment in the symbolic system with their own cultural characteristics and logic in it.At the same time,with the help of the dynamic operation of symbols,the adjustment between man and his natural and cultural environment is finally achieved in harmony.Fourth,though outside food and outside culture have expanded Tibetan former diet system,enriched their diet structure with local zanba as their main food,they haven’t replaced the core position of Zanba and butter in the Tibetan diet culture.Zanba is still an important cultural carrier of memory,symbols and heritage in Tibetan society.In probing into barley Zanba culture,this paper always has a distinct main line of humanistic thought.That is to say,the author also includes other dietary structures,describes Tibetan idea of dietotherapy,medicine and food being the same origin,talks about their ecological law of life equality,and introduces their humanistic concept of "good" and their tradition of "respecting the old".