Here at the China at the Crossroads blog, I'm all about giving my readers the hard-hitting analysis that I know they crave. It's for this reason, that today's post returns to that most important of topics: the ethnic significance of Chinese barbecue.
For those of you who missed part one of this most important line of inquiry, here's a quick recap. Throughout much of China, yangrou chuan'r (羊肉串), or lamb kebabs, reign as king of the late-night barbecue world. The tradition of skewering meat on sticks, slathering it in chili, and flash-grilling it exists in many places in the world, but in China's case, the origins of chuan'r lie in the annals of the legendary Silk Road. The meat on a stick tradition mostly likely originates from Central Asian traders bringing the practice to China. Not surprisingly, many Chinese people Han and Hui alike identify northwestern Xinjiang province as the mecca of all things barbecue related. However, as I mentioned last time, there's a bit of confusion about the status of yangrou chuan'r as an ethnic boundary marker. In Beijing, numerous vendors sell chuan'r, and the skewers of lamb aren't as clearly identified as a staple of Islamic halal (or qingzhen, in Chinese) cuisine.
In Jinan, however, the story is a bit different. As I've mentioned before, the epicenter of JInan's booming chuan'r industry is none other than the Hui Quarter. Barbecue restaurants are pervasive throughout the city, but the Hui Quarter is synonymous with yangrou chuan'r. Jinan residents offer different takes on when and how the neighborhood began to be defined by its association with lamb kebabs. Some suggest that barbecue has always been a particularly large part of life in Jinan, and that street-corner barbecue stands have been around well before the Cultural Revolution, and the recent reopening of restaurants as private businesses. Others maintain that the popularity of barbecue restaurants is a relatively recent development, and that only since the early 1980s, when migrants from Xinjiang and Gansu in west China arrived in the city, has barbecue been so popular. Regardless, the primary association that most residents of Jinan have with Hui Quarter is through yangrou chuan'r.
Beyond all of this, I've learned through my interviews here, that Jinan is currently in the throes of a chuan'r craze. Many of the people I talk to mention the fact that, much more than other surrounding cities in Shandong (or north China, for that matter), Jinan has gained a reputation for being a chuan'r-obsessed city. "I have friends from outside of the city, from Dezhou and Qingdao, in my classes who tell me they can't believe how much people in Jinan love to eat chuan'r," says one university student I interviewed. "They say, 'Wow, Jinanese people really love barbecue. We eat barbecue, too, but not as much as you Jinanese." The craze is not limited to Hui residents. Another interviewee, a twenty-something, ethnically Han, English teacher echoes these sentiments. "People in Jinan really do love to eat chuan'r," she tells me, "and I have no idea why." The reasons behind Jinan's chuan'r addication are a mystery. For some, the rise of Jinan's chuan'r industry is linked to the city's love of beer (China's best selling, most famous beer brand, Tsingtao is produced in only a few hours away in Qingdao).
Here's where things get interesting, though. Jinan's hankering for chuan'r is so powerful that it has spawned new advances in the world of grilled-meat-on-a-stick. Enter 猪肉串 (zhurou chuan'r, pork kebabs).
Indeed, in a stretch of Jinan, not far from the Hui Quarter, a series of restaurants proudly advertise pork kebabs. Unlike yangrou chuan'r, this barbecue is certainly not halal. The menu at these places offers a variety of different skewered meats, but all of them are one variety or another of pork: pork ribs, pork tenderloin, pork chops, etc. Surprisingly, more traditional items (like yangrou chuan'r, or chicken and garlic, or lamb kidney, or chicken heart kebabs) are not found anywhere on the menu. Zhurou chuan'r restuarants are almost entirely about pork.
I've never seen zhurou chuan'r outside of Jinan. While it's certainly possible that they exist elsewhere, it certainly seems like a local specialty. Interview respondents certainly tell me as much. "People in Jinan love barbecue so much," says the English teacher, "You know, now we even have pork barbecue, right?" I find her emphasis of this fact telling. Simply put, these restaurants are not usual. They're almost certainly a reflection of Jinan's barbecue madness. But there's more to this revelation, as my English-teacher interviewee explains. "In the last four or five years, a lot of these zhurou chuan'r restaurants have opened," she says. So, pork kebabs are not a new phenomenon.
This raises some interesting questions. The push to open new barbecue restaurants clearly seems to be an attempt to cash in on the rising tide of consumer demand. However, the choice to open a restaurant that serves almost exclusively pork raises eyebrows. It's possible that the choice to serve pork reflects a desire for the kind of novelty status that attracts customers. After all, the Han owner can boast that he offers something his Hui counterparts can't. However, electing to do this still reveals an inherent connection between lamb kebabs and Islamic culture. The fact that the restaurants are marketed specifically as places to eat pork chuan'r, rather than as 烧烤 (shaokao), or barbecue in general seems to suggest that pork kebabs are different from other, ostensibly halal barbecue. This could suggest that barbecue is, indeed, a significant marker of the ethnic boundaries that separate Han and Hui. It could suggest that even relatively minor and ordinary things like flash-grilled, skewered bits of lamb meat are used as a handy shorthand for distinguishing between the two cultures.
There are plenty of other questions to ask: Are these decisions conscious ones? Is there an ethno-centric impulse behind opening this kind of restaurant? Is this merely an instance of market forces shaping ethnic tradition? All are interesting questions, and are worth exploring. For the moment, however, the presence of pork kebabs in a kebab-crazed Jinan just throws another fascinating layer of ambiguity onto the ethnic boundaries surrounding barbecue culture in China.