Nowadays, the Chinese are famous for their food—but not for their cheeses or for their dairy products. Scholarly and popular accounts explain this through biological and cultural factors—the prevalence of lactose intolerance and xenophobia, for example. This talk challenges the popular and scholarly view through a mouthwatering tour of dishes composed of curds. It traces the long history of curds in China, demonstrating that such foods were regarded as delicacies by the elite, and account for their sudden and belated disappearance from the modern Chinese diet. The talk then concludes by exploring the modern legacies of the Chinese fascination with curds.

Miranda Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, where she has taught since completing her PhD in History at UC Berkeley in 2002. She is the author of more than a dozen articles in Chinese cultural and social history and two books: "The Politics of Mourning in Early China" (2007) and "The Art of Medicine in Early China: The Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive" (2015). She is also a founding editor of "Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Ancient and Medieval Pasts." She is currently preoccupied with the history of Chinese food.