Airborne prawns and decayed rice: food politics in Wartime Chongqing

ABSTRACT

This article explores the multilayered dimensions of food politics in wartime Chongqing. A substantial number of wartime Chongqing dwellers were migrants who flocked to the city, having evacuated from coastal China to follow the Nationalists after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. They could not simply be called refugees. Rather, they were sophisticated urbanites known by Chongqing natives as “downriver folks” who brought their political awareness and cultural tastes to the new wartime capital. Some introduced their sumptuous dining culture to Chongqing, thereby provoking a public sense of deprivation, while others brought organizational skills with which to turn public discontent into a political issue. This article argues that an increasing sense of deprivation stemming from the deterioration of the food situation in the city, if seemingly less significant than massive rural famine, became more consequential in the long run than any other political issue in the subsequent Civil War years.     

Electron backscatter diffraction investigation of length‐fast chalcedony in agate: implications for agate genesis and growth mechanisms

Agates of volcanic origin contain a range of silica minerals, with chalcedony and quartz arranged in concentric bands. Although agates are abundant worldwide, little is known about the genesis of their characteristic banding patterns. Current hypotheses suggest the bands result either from precipitation from convecting siliceous hydrothermal influxes or by in situ crystallization of a silica gel. This study combines the use of a variety of analytical techniques, including electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), cathodoluminescence (CL), and Fourier transform infrared (FT‐IR) spectroscopy, to characterize the silica minerals present and investigate their spatial and crystallographic relationships in the banding arrangement. Microstructural and spectroscopic observations reveal that chalcedony bands are composed of amorphous silica that also contains nanocrystalline and later‐formed microcrystalline quartz. Nano‐ and microcrystalline quartz grew with a‐axes perpendicular to the growth substrate, typical of length‐fast chalcedony. The bands formed as a result of discrete influxes of silica‐rich fluid. Within these individual bands, there is a sequence of minerals: chalcedony‐A (with amorphous silica and nanocrystalline quartz) → chalcedony‐MQ (with microcrystalline quartz) → quartz. This sequence is reflected in the degree of crystallinity, crystal orientations and water content and is analogous to a diagenetic cycle; the initial chalcedony portion of the band commences with amorphous silica with nanocrystalline quartz followed by fibrous microcrystalline quartz crystals; chalcedony then grades into larger equiaxial mesoquartz crystals. This paragenetic sequence suggests a viable model for the growth of chalcedony in agates.