Imagined Yangcheng Lake:Food, Community And Consumption

Hairy Crabs is one of the highest economic value of freshwater crabs in China. The Yangcheng Lake hairy crab, generally considered from Yangcheng Lake, is one of the most well-known one in the Yangtze River Delta region, even more by the people of all the country. In the recent years, however, the Yangcheng Lake hairy crab become a hot topic. It has become a star food, both because its price is very high, and also because there are many other crabs counterfeited as the famous one. Meanwhile, it brings about many new problems, for example, it leads to the discussion of trust crisis and social immorality. The Yangcheng Lake hairy crab today is not only a pure food, but also an issue of mass communication, which is a carrier to build community and identity.The thesis consists of six chapter. The first chapter is introductory, which gives the question consciousness, literature review, and the research methods. The second chapter gives a description of three typical case of crab production, to show the process of removing the local character of Yangcheng Lake. The third chapter summarizes the main consumption types, and the fourth chapter holds the point that mass communication forms a consumption community of Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs. The fifth chapter account the community as an imagined community, and analyzes the imagination from three dimensions, which are the orthodox, the tradition, and the class. The last chapter comes to the conclusion that the consumption of Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs help to imgine the consumption, and the three dimensions of imagination follow logic.