Invitation to a Banquet: Exploring Chinese food
What is Chinese food and how has it been understood and misunderstood in the west? Author and cook Fuchsia Dunlop draws on three decades’ of experience to examine some of the fundamental aspects of Chinese food and ask how outsiders can appreciate it more deeply.

Fuchsia Dunlop is a James Beard award-winning food writer and cook specialising in Chinese cuisine. After graduating from Cambridge University in English Literature, she spent a year at Sichuan University as a British Council Scholar in the mid-1990s. Afterwards, she trained as a chef at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine: the start of a lifelong fascination with Chinese food. Over the three decades since, she has travelled widely in China, documenting recipes and foodways and talking to just about everybody about food. Fuchsia is the author of seven books about Chinese food including, most recently, Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food, which recently won the 2024 Fortnum and Mason Food Book award and is the fifth of her books to have been published in Chinese translation. She is a regular contributor to FT Weekend and other publications and to radio and TV shows including Ugly Delicious and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown.
Date: 12 June 2024, 17:00 (Wednesday, 8th week, Trinity 2024)
Venue: Dickson Poon Building, Canterbury Road OX2 6LU
Venue Details: Kin-ku Cheng Lecture Theatre (lower ground floor)
Speaker: Ms Fuchsia Dunlop
Organising department: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Organiser: Professor Todd Hall (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: information@chinese.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Todd Hall (University of Oxford)
Part of: Baillie Gifford Distinguished Speaker Series
Booking required?: Not required
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editor: Clare Orchard