“Food Is Heaven, Heaven Is Food”
Aroma Spreads at Frankfurt Book Fair

“Our experience has shown that food is a way to uncover a nation’s soul and it is undoubtedly an effective starting point, whether it is to deepen the understanding of the history, geography and culture of a country, or to help enhance its national image.”Martina Stemann, who is in charge of the Gourmet Gallery at the Frankfurt Book Fair said, “This is why we set up the Gourmet Gallery at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the first place and invited the Chinese food culture thematic exhibition ‘Food Is Heaven, Heaven Is Food’ to be held here.”

On October 11th, 2017, the Chinese food culture thematic exhibition “Food Is Heaven, Heaven Is Food” organized by the Confucius Institute Headquarters officially kicked off in the Gourmet Gallery at the Frankfurt Book Fair, initiating an aroma trip of Chinese food culture.

Jing Wei, Deputy Chief Executive of the Confucius Institute Headquarters delivering a speech at the opening ceremony

On the day of the opening ceremony, Jing Wei, Deputy Chief Executive of the Confucius Institute Headquarters, Edouard Cointreau, President of the Gourmet International and Martina Stemann, the person in charge of the Frankfurt Food Fair attended the opening ceremony and delivered speeches. First of all, Ms. Jing Wei briefed the distinguished guests on the original intention, main contents and shining activities of the Confucius Institute Headquarters, and explained the profound and extensive philosophical, aesthetic and cultural connotations in the Chinese food culture. She also expressed the best wishes of the Confucius Institute to adopt culture as a media to promote the language and cultural exchanges of all countries and narrow down the heart distance among the peoples. Mr. Cointreau exclaimed Chinese cuisine with great excitement and commended the exhibition for the perfect blending of diet and culture. Ms. Stemann said that it is the first time for the Frankfurt Book Fair to hold a Chinese food exhibition and she highly praised that the Confucius Institute Headquarters can bring Chinese food culture to this platform. She also expressed her sincere crave for the overall design of the exhibition. More than 300 representatives attended the opening ceremony, including Chen Ping, Minister Counselor of Cultural Affairs of Chinese Embassy in Germany, Martina Hasse, a German sinologist , Zeng Zirong, President of CITIC Art Museum, Miao Wei, a writer, Wang Kai, Representative of Movable Type and other cultural representatives, representatives from Confucius Institutes in Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, Leipzig and other places, as well as delegates from the institutions of publishing, tourism, cultural transmission, etc in China and other countries.

The opening ceremony of the Chinese food culture exhibition of “Food Is Heaven, Heaven Is Food”

The exhibition innovatively focused the Chinese food culture on three themes: “Food is Home”, “Food is (He) Art” and “Food is Health”. The connotation of people and home (hometown), people and society, people and nature as well as other deep meaning in food culture all found expressions in the book and multimedia display area, interactive device area, forum activity area in multi-dimensions and at multi-levels. The book and multimedia display area brought together 120 kinds of Chinese food books and exquisite menus from China, along with the Chinese food culture short film collection, “eight Chinese cuisines” interactive software and large screen device of “food somatosensory game” to demonstrate the rich diversity of Chinese diet. The Interactive device area vividly displayed the food and aesthetics in the Chinese classical paintings, photographic pictures, folk paintings, contemporary ink paintings and other works of art with a multimedia projection device, reflecting the combination of Chinese diet and art; this area also displayed 64 different sorts of ingredients and herbs in Chinese diet with another group of art devices, expressing China’s unique concept of “Food is Health”. The forum activity area profoundly illustrated Chinese food culture in the forms of dialogue, forums, performances and interaction via topics such as the history of Chinese diet and changes, literature and food, food in art, street food culture and folk craftsman spirit, slow food and vegetarian diet in the contemporary world.

Spectators of “Food Is Heaven, Heaven Is Food” trying game of Chinese characters

In the afternoon, on the platform of Gourmet Salon at the Book Fair, Jing Wei, Deputy Chief Executive of the Confucius Institute Headquarters, Miao Wei, a writer, and Michael Kahn-Ackermann, Consultant of the Confucius Institute Headquarters carried out some dialogue activities themed with “Chinese food: between past and future—A bloom of Chinese food culture”. They introduced to the audience in details the “changes and non-changes” of Chinese food and the Chinese lifestyle in the rapid development of Chinese society, economy, science and technology.

Dialogue of “Chinese food: between past and future—A bloom of Chinese food culture” on the Gourmet Salon

On the platform of Show Kitchen at the book fair, Chinese chef Chen Xiaobo and Marcus Hernig, a German food writer participated in the “Competition between Eastern and Western cooking: starting from knives”. They conquered all the audience with their humor, splendid knife-using skills and noodle-pulling performances. The scene was so warm that the exclamation and applause was continuous.

Kitchen live show “Competition between Eastern and Western cooking: starting from knives” in the Show Kitchen

On October 12th, on the platform of Kids Stage at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Jing Wei, Deputy Chief Executive of the Confucius Institute Headquarters and Cao Wenxuan, a famous writer carried out a dialogue on the topic of “Meeting with Cao Wenxuan—Chinese winner of Hans Christian Andersen Award” and it was the extension project of the painting exhibition “Children Picture Books from China” in 2016. In the same period, the Confucius Institute Headquarters organized a series of exhibitions of “Cao Wenxuan Literary Exchanges Trip to Germany in 2017” to the Munich International Youth Library in and the Heidelberg City Library in cooperation with the Jiangsu Phoenix Publishing &Media Group Co., Ltd. with the support of the Munich Confucius Institute and the Confucius Institute at Heidelberg University.

“Meeting with Cao Wenxuan—Chinese winner of Hans Christian Andersen Award” on the Kids Stage

Jing Wei, Deputy Chief Executive of the Confucius Institute Headquarters delivering a speech on the Kids stage

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, the booth of the Confucius Institute Headquarters carried out some wonderful events every day. Zeng Zirong delivered a speech on “Food themes in Chinese and foreign paintings” and interpreted the food-related calligraphy at the scene. Wang Kai, a representative of Movable Type gave a live tea art performance and talked about “the differences between Chinese people’s current and past tea-drinking” as well as “Slow food movement in China: localization, rural ordering and rural Michelin”. Marta Valentin, Executive Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Milan and an expert Italian wine taster aired some views on “Noodles with wines and we are talking about China and Italy!” The topic activities were content-rich and endless, such as Marcus Herning’s “Cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries along the Belt and Road”, Julie Dautel’s “Snacks on Shanghai streets”, Zhou Qi’s “Shanghai grocery store”, Martina Hasse’s “Chinese vegetarian tradition in the eyes of a German”, Nelly Ma’s “24 solar terms guide our healthy diet” and a Chinese medicine expert’s explanation of the homology of medicine and diet, etc. Noodle-pulling performance and the interaction as well as the Q&A session on food culture were respectively set up in this process, which helped to catch the audience’s stomach and heart.

The audience cannot suppress their expression of joy and intoxication at the scene and the number of booth audience exceeded more than 3,000 on a daily basis, fully confirming the saying that the diet is an eternal way to open up the international cultural exchanges. At present, a number of Confucius Institutes and overseas cultural institutions have already sent invitations to look forward to embracing a global tour of “Food Is Heaven, Heaven Is Food”.

At press time, the Confucius Institute Headquarters has received the invitation from kitchen live show—Show Kitchen of the Frankfurt Book Fair and will be present on this platform once again on the afternoon of October 13th local time to demonstrate the beauty of Chinese food.