Yiliang Roast Duck: The Construction Of A Geographical Symbol Explore

In human society, foods not only have physical characteristics, but also lade with important symbolic significances. We can see the culture characteristics of the society, interactions of the society and self-identity of the local people from its foods and eating behaviors. In recent years, foods have being added with cultural significance increasingly, and forming the so-called "food culture". What we need to think behind this phenomenon is that how the foods be contacted with social-cultural, how the significance be created, what the effects of this significances, and what's the relationship among the people, foods and socio-cultural during a period of history? Based on all these considerations, the author did research on the Yiliang Duck.During the reign of Emperor Guangxu (1901), a person of Yiliang in Yunnan Province named Xu Shi went to Beijing to take metropolitan examination with his fellow villager attendant Liu Wen. During exam days of Xu, Liu learned how to make Peking Duck from PianYiFang Duck Restaurant near their accommodation. After coming back to Yiliang, Liu combined the local duck technology with Peking Duck technology created the new roast technology formed the famous Yingliang Duck. After more than a century, the Yiliang Duck have become a regional symbol of Yingliang from an exotic food. In this paper the authou mainly focused on the following two issues:How does the Yiliang Duck be given a variety of cultural connotations in different spatial and temporal as a kind of food. How does the duck become a symbol of the region by adding local elements to highlight in their home as a kind of the external thing. Concerned to both questions, the author discussed relationship between man and the meaning of the "objects", and took the duck as an example to explore the characteristics, significances, effects of the "symbolic" phenomenon in contemporary society.This paper included three parts:introduction, body and conclusion, a total of five chapters:The introduction of this study consisted of the origin, research ideas and research methods. The author found few in-depth study of anthropology of food in China Mainland by searching the research of anthropology of food and Symbolic Anthropology. However, the question is that exotic food how to become a regional culture symbol by being add and highlight Local elements was not studied, therefore, the author chose this issue to research in.In the first Chapter, first, the author started the paper by analyzing the story which locals use to describe how and where Yiliang duck come from. There are three versions of story about origin of Yiliang Duck. They were Open Flame Roast Duck of Cao, Learning Peking Roast Duck of Liu Wen and Roast Duck of Li San. The author tried to analyze the origin, content and background of these stories, local people's idea and connotation of the stories to find out the Concerned about the meaning expressed by these stories.In the second chapter, specific analysis on how does exotic food roast duck integrate into the local life step by step and be laden with regional symbolic meaning. According to the symbolization process characteristic of Yiliang roast duck, the author divided the development process into three periods:correspond to bottom layer (popular)─upper levels (official)--intermix. In each period, the local people modifies the symbolize meaning of Yiliang roast duck, aiming to achieving localization symbolic meaning of north duck.The third chapter mainly focused on the meaning of regional symbolic and explored the relationship between duck and people. The author explained the formation of the meaning of regional symbolic from analyzing the local effect of the Yiliang Duck as a local symbolic and people's cognition of inner and outer to reveal the relationship of local social culture changes and interaction of inner and outer in the process of food development. Conclusion:The author considered that the symbolic of the Yiliang Duck formed by multi-forces and it is also the result of increasingly adding meanings to the object by people. People added local elements gradually to make the exotic food becoming a regional symbolic, while the local elements which are people's understandings of historical background and interactions with each other. They are not original, but have the characteristic of dynamic and situationalism. Therefore, the meaning of regional symbolic is different in different times for different people. Foods have been created and been given new meanings in contemporary society, which is a part of social changes and also the force of creation of social relationship and people's concept.