Title:
An Extensive History of Chinese Food
Project Owner:
Siyu Lu(Lauren)
Project team:
This is an individual project, I will do everything by myself.
I need to play a role to find and credit for all of the pictures. I plan to get majority of my picture resource from baidu.com, google image, KFC China official website, Chinese Mcdonlad’s official website, Chinese pizza hut official website and photo that has been taken by myself, my friends and my family members.
I will also be writing explanatory texts.
I will also play a role of making Twine game and make put it into my website. I plan to insert a map of China, and link it to Twine, which will have a game to let people choose the time range and location. So people can click on the map and choose which province that they want to learn more about in terms of the food by chronological order. I will provide a short information and picture with the selected food. In this way, people who view my website can has a better interaction. For this role I need someone that is familiar with digital techniques. This is a role of making, combining and maintaining the website.
I need a person to play the role of video taker and a Chinese food maker. I might need some cooking videos which appears in modern Chinese history. The international trade created fusion food in China, in which I will have pictures of food. These are combinations of different cultures. This video section is not necessary; it depends on am I going to finish my other steps on time and have enough time to make the videos.
Scholarly Significance:
People from different countries can easily be engaged with each other nowadays. With more and more Chinese immigrants in America, there are more and more Chinese restaurants. But some of the Chinese food in American restaurants have been adjusted to adapt to Americans’ stomach.
I have also noticed that there is Chinese style American food, such as the Chinese version of KFC, which sells soymilk and rice. I eat New Orleans Chicken in Chinese KFC since I was a little child. But when I went to America, I realize it is not the representative of southern American food. On the other hand, American style Chinese food like Orange Chicken and fortune cookies were invented by Chinese immigrants. No one in China eats that type of food. Some American people think Chinese people are addicted to rice, but it is not true. Chinese people usually have some vegetables, meat, fruit and other food to eat with rice. Rice is just a small part of normal meals. There are also regional differences in Chinese food. Northern Chinese people prefer to have noodles, while typical southern Chinese people prefer rice more.
The purpose of this website is to show people all around the world what Chinese people eat everyday and how the food on the Chinese table have been changed through thousands of years. With the development of Human society and technology, people from different countries have more and more cultural exchange. I want to explore how those things affect food. But since there are millions types of different food, I will only chose rice, fruit, meat, vegetable and spice to focus. I want show people internationally, how the history has changed and how Chinese food change over time. I also want to show how international trade has changed Chinese food. There are not enough resources for American people to know the food in China.
The source I would use to support my website are some old Chinese famous poem and books (which include food). KFC China website and historical menus at library.
Sample Cite:
ctext.org/book_of_poetry
Project Description:
I will have three main pages: “Home”, “Discover” and “Contacts”.
1. Home: It will have some Chinese style pictures and short text descriptions of some popular Chinese food now. (rice, red pepper, and some snacks). I try to keep my home page as simple as possible, because it is the first appearance to my readers. This gives people a general definition about what is Chinese food. Because some of this website user might not familiar with the culture.
2.Discover: A general map of China, then there will be a Chinese map and people can click on the different provinces, then they can select a time range. After the selection it will show what Chinese people eat daily in that time and that region, for example: rice(or not rice), fruit, meat and spice(usually pepper). I will use Twine game to achieve this goal.
Time Range plan:
BC 2100-1600 Xia Dynasty
BC 1600-1050 Shang Dynasty
BC 1060-256 Zhou Dynasty
BC 221-AC 220 Qin Dynasty & Han Dynasty
AC 220-589 Six Dynasties Period
AC 581-960 Sui Dynasty & Tang Dynasty &Five Dynasties Period
AC 960-1279 Song Dynasty Period
AC 1279-1368 Yuan Dynasty
AC 1368-1644 Ming Dynasty
AC 1644-1912 Qing Dynasty
(It will have a more internationally selection food influence in China, because this is the time China start to keep in touch with International people)
AC 1912-1949 Republic Period
AC 1949-Present People Republic of China
Map plan:
(picture from Wikipedia)
The Province China: XinJinag, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan,Yunan, Ningxia,Guizhou, Guangxi,Hunan,Hubei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Henan, Anhui, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Fujian,Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang., Hainan, Taiwan. Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, Shenzhen are cities, but they didn’t belong to any larger province, because they are large enough to count as their own province.
I will do my project by region: eastern China, Southern China, Western China and Northern China. Because different climate and geography do affect people’s food. For example the northern people eat less rice than the southern China. Northern people eat more pot stickers and noodles than southern people. The food flavors are mostly depending on geography. Such as in ancient China, the southwestern part are cold and moister during the winter time. So they prefer to eat food that made by the spicy red pepper. I will definitely mention the climate change affect food choice of people. The general rules of Chinese food are: Sour in east, Spicy in West, Sweet in South and Salty in North. This is not super accurate because since the Sichuan food become popular, the younger generation can tolerate more spicy red pepper than old generations.
- Contact: I will list my contact information, so that people can email me if they think I can improve this website more. Also I will have all the photo credits in the contact page.
Bulleted list of deliverables:
*Step 1: Gather pictures from Chinese food. Either from (Baidu, Google, KFC China, McDonald China, and Pizza Hut China, or taken by myself, and my family member)
*Step 2: Writing down descriptions for pictures
*Step 3: Make a website and have my “Home”,”Discover” and “Contact” page set up.(This is really important step, because it will also contain the layout of my website.)
*Step 4: Make Twine game(divided by Chinese dynasties)
* Step 5: Upload Pictures and descriptions
*Step 6: Insert Twine Game
*Step 7: Find people to shoot video
*Step 8: Shoot videos and insert to “International Food” section.
*Step 9: Created a new e-mail for contact information and leave it on website.
*Step 10: Put all the credits on my “Contact” page.
Step 11: Keep checking the website after the semester end
Timeline for completion:
I already finished most part of step 1, 2 and 3 before spring break. I found the pictures by the order of “home” and “Discover” I still need more pictures in “Discover” section. I will see how it goes with my Twine game. I still need to have a better customize of my project site. The link of my website is below.
http://chinesefood.leadr.msu.edu
Step 4 and 5 is my most important part of the project, I plan to finish my Twine game and put pictures by April 10th.
Step 6 are going to be done right after I finish my Twine game.
I already find people for step7, I will use the weekend April 16th and 17th to shoot and edit the video for step8.
I already finish step 9 when I start to make my actual project. The email is: laurenlyusiyu@gmail.com
Step 10 is the last step of my project, it is going to be done during the April 20th. If I finish those things on time, I can start to think my step without an asterisk.
Launch/production plan:
My project will be a wordpress website. I use the Website which professor gives to me. I will be responsible for fixing and maintaining it. I checked a couple Youtube video on how to make a website by WordPress. I need to have a wordpress account(which I already have), then choose a website building platform(wordpress).Since this is a project for class, Then I should setup, mostly add content and set up new pages. And customizes it.
From the experience that I gains from review other people’s project, I feels like the home page is the most important thing. I will only put a couple pictures on my home pages to make it easy and simple. I would choose light color for my homepage background. My ideal home page is the official website of Apple. But I know this is impossible. I would use the Twine game as my majority part. I also will be aware of don’t too much texts only in a single page in Twine. For my “Contact” page, I should not make it silly. I probably just introduce what’s the purpose I make this(class project) and my background, a contact e-mail, the sources and credit I use. I will spending most times on my “Discovery” page. Because it requires Twine. The hardest for this is that I need a good logic, but since I start from my 4 locations, and each location contains the several times from my timeline list above in this blog. Then each timeline contains “Side(usually rice)”, “Fruit”, “Meat” “Vegetable” and “Spice”. The best thing for Twine is that food can be overlap in Twine. This is time saving. The second hardest thing is the resources, because the most resource I get are from Chinese, I can’t translate everything to English. But I assume most of my users are American. So this is my challenge to make a credible professional website. Combining Twine game to the page is hard, too. It can make my website user to have some engagement and also not too much workload for me. I need to know how to make a Twine to my website, how to put pictures and videos to my Twine. I can use the cheat sheet that professor provide for Twine. I plan to put a video of Kimchi fried rice, which is a combination of fried rice (Chinese food), Kimchi(Korean food) and Cheese(American food). This is the result of international trade. I am going to ask my friends to make some other combine culture food, too. If we are too busy at the end of the semester, it would be just pictures. I am trying to have large and high quality pictures in my projects.
End of Life Issues:
I will try to edit it during the summer. I will add more Chinese food pictures to my website if I can finish my plan on time. I don’t know how long the server will last for. If I still have the right to edit for one more year, I will keep running this website. As I mentioned I will created an email for this website. I will also post more pictures of current Chinese food during the summer, because I will fly back home and take pictures. Also my grandma is a really amazing and creative cook, she has almost 60 years of experience of making Chinese food. She knows the secret of how to make a tasty food. So I will take picture of the food she makes and do a short interview and put it into my Twine game. And I will also leave a short “Grandma’s quote” In my home page from my interview. I will try to check it as often as possible during the time I still own the website. I could develop this website more if there are a lot of people interested in it.
laurensiyulu 