PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

Chapter 4- Home, domesticity and belongingstays at home looking after kids and prepares food waiting for me coming back fromwork to have meals together‘. Such expectation has also encouraged my femalerespondents who did not cook in Taiwan to learn cooking to fulfill their husbands‘imagination of home. In this sense, a new form of domestic gender relations anddivision of labour that are different from those in Taiwan are thus constituted in China.However, the transfer of the home-cooking to A Yi can also create a place wheredifferent culinary and food cultures meet. The coalescence of different food culturesmay also bring fun and an understanding of Chinese food culture to Taiwaneseexpatriates, as Betty explained:Sometimes, I will buy foodstuffs or materials that I had never seen in Taiwan and ask A Yito cook that for us so that we can try Chinese food and know more about Chinese cuisine.It is very interesting though.But such practices of consuming Chinese cuisine, for most of my respondents, are oftenvery rare events and are often for fun. Dorothy (housewife living in downtownShanghai, in her 40s) said, ‗it [having Chinese meals at home] does not happen veryoften, but is just a once-in-a-while pleasure‘. It is still the familiar taste and smell of theTaiwanese meals that is preferred and insisted upon by most of my respondents as it isalways what can make them to have the sensory experience of home.In short, the above discussion made it clear that food consumption can be a useful wayfor Taiwanese expatriates to fulfill their imagination of and longing for home byallowing them to experience the taste of home and the sensual familiarity, continuityand stabilisation. This is not only fulfilled by practicalities of home-cooking including144