How food and chopstick skills are helping ease US-China tensions

What officials eat and how have become key ingredients in efforts to find common ground in a testy relationship.

Shanghai, China – “The Chinese take great pride in their food,” read a memo prepared for United States President Richard Nixon ahead of his groundbreaking visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972. Nixon’s lavish state banquet with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing, broadcast live across the world, was crucial in improving US public opinion of a country that had been hidden from view for decades.

More than half a century later, food is once again playing a central role in nurturing warmer US-China relations. With Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen both recently wrapping up their second visits to China in less than a year, meals have emerged as a key ingredient in stabilising ties between the two countries, as officials on both sides look to tap into the potential of what has been called “food diplomacy”.

Yellen’s visit in early April was notable for the level of Chinese public attention on her food choices. Anticipation was high after her first visit last July, when her choice of a Beijing restaurant serving authentic food from the country’s southern Yunnan province, including mushrooms that can have psychedelic effects if cooked improperly, made her a social media darling in China.

This time around, it was not only her choice of authentic Cantonese and Sichuan food that grabbed headlines but also her use of chopsticks at a popular Guangzhou restaurant established in 1880, reminiscent of Nixon’s own chopstick skills that also impressed his hosts in 1972.

Although Yellen is known to sample local food during her trips around the US, the symbolic significance of doing so in China was especially pronounced, according to Thomas DuBois, a historian of China who teaches at Beijing Normal University.