To the People, Food Is Heaven ─ Stories of Food and Life in a Changing China

In China, the world’s next superpower, life is comfortable for the fortunate few. For others, it’s a hand-to-mouth struggle for a full stomach, a place to live, wages for work done, and freedom to speak openly. In a place where few things are more important than food, “Have you eaten yet?” is another way of saying hello. After traversing the country and meeting its people, Ang shares her delicious experiences with us. She tells of a clandestine cup of salty yak butter tea with a Tibetan monk during a military crackdown and explains how a fluffy spring onion omelet encapsulates China’s drive for rural development. You’ll have lunch with some of the country's most enduring activists, savor meals with earthquake survivors, and get to know a house cleaner who makes the best fried chicken in all of Beijing. Ang bites into the gaping divide between rich and poor, urban and rural reform, intolerance for dissent, and the growing dissatisfaction with those in power. By serving these topics to us one at a time, To the People, Food Is Heaven provides a fresh perspective beyond the country’s anonymous identity as an economic powerhouse. Ang plates a terrific, wide-ranging feast that is the new China. Have you eaten yet?

Audra Ang, a former Beijing correspondent for The Associated Press, has been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for Chinese Studies and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. She divides her time between Asia and the U.S. and regularly eats unseemly amounts of food at one sitting.

Ken Hom is one of the world’s authorities on Chinese and Asian cooking and the author of 34 books to date. Oxford Brookes University named him founding patron of Oxford Gastronomica, the Centre for Food, Drink, and Culture, and in 2009 he received an honorary OBE from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the culinary arts. He divides his time between France and Thailand.