Culinary art, political theater, and COVID-19 policy: An ethnographic study of a live poultry stall in Wuxi

Abstract

Emblematic of the ubiquitous wet markets in China, the live-poultry trade has far-reaching influences on Chinese people's diet, culinary art, social interactions, and cultural identities. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the live-poultry trade has also borne the brunt of this public health crisis due to its notorious history of spreading avian flu and its association with the spread of coronavirus. There have been serious consequences—successive open-ended bans on live poultry trade at urban markets have been announced by several cities, Wuxi, China, included. Based on seven-week field research on a conventional live-poultry stall at a major wet market in Wuxi, this article examines the live-poultry stall's work setting, interactions between live-poultry vendors and consumers in building and practicing culinary values (including food qualities and cooking mastery), ethical issues around live-poultry slaughtering, and how the local Wuxi government contrives to rehabilitate the city from an “endemic” business via an epidemic. We argue that there are underlying political agendas relating to cravings for modernity and urbanization behind a seemingly radical hygienic discourse, which tends to proselytize cultural customs and suppress the social functions of public space. The live-poultry stall thus undergoes intersectional framing as a “culinary oasis” versus a “petri dish,” and a “social courtyard” versus a “political theater,” in this national anti-epidemic movement.