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.