マレー半島のチャイニーズの食文化

移民・都市・ジェンダー

抄録

In the literature on overseas Chinese, the socio-cultural characteristics of overseas Chinese people have been discussed from various perspectives. However, their food culture has not been discussed in general terms as “overseas Chinese food,” although the diversity and history of the food have been explored individually. This paper examines the food culture of the Chinese people in the Malay Peninsula (Singapore and Malaysia) and highlights that it is characterized by high-calorie “convenience eating” [Mintz 1985], as well as community dining and culinary practices in a multicultural urban context that allow people to eat what they want individually. Notably, customers of hawker centres (popular food courts in the Malay Peninsula) order and eat the food they want whenever they want. This is not a dining style that involves sharing food from the same plate; rather, by being at the same place at the same time while eating what they want individually, people are able to loosely connect and check on each other. This type of dining, in which people eat what they want whenever they want, is very common in the Malay Peninsula where people from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds live together. Dining in public spaces with a wide variety of choices is particularly significant and actually constitutes an urban way of eating and drinking, which is considered as a major overseas Chinese food culture characteristic.