ABSTRACT
On December 15, 1900, the Lotos Club honored Wu Ting Fang, the Chinese Minister to the United States, with a “State Dinner.” The event offers an important window to turn of the century Sino-US relations, and the ways in which perspectives of Chinese and American officials, as well as ordinary Chinese immigrants, became articulated through gastronomical practices. I read in this mode of politics making—a practice I call “gastronomical diplomacy”—a kind of political theatre in which the form more than the substance of politics gets played out on what is eaten, with whom, and to what ends. These formal dinners provided a potent mix of symbols upon which the invested actors attempted to shape popular perception of the contemporary state and future of Sino-U.S. relationship. Through the widespread media coverage of these affairs, white American news consumers came to better and more positive understandings of China, Chinese culture, and Chinese people, one that elevated the feelings of respect that China and China hands believed was long overdue. This is a story, then, of the complex negotiation between Chinese state actors, U.S. internationalists, and ordinary Chinese immigrants over how to present China in a favorable light, and how those negotiations in turn affected popular attitudes in the United States.