Living on a college campus, we often loose grasp of the value of a home-cooked meal. Traveling abroad to a culture where food and the dinner table are central pieces to community building can therefore be quite a shock. This phenomenon is exactly what junior Amy Rapp ’17 felt this past semester in Nanjing, China.

Amy specifically highlighted the importance of “showcasing a dish” in China in a way that mirrored attentive artistry. “Presentation and quality” were specifically noted as memorable because of the meaning they had behind just being a dish on the table. Amy described going to a dumpling house in Xi’an and “seeing dumplings that were shaped after the animal from which the meat came from.” This food-oriented detail to her reflected the great “meaning” placed on the perception of someone’s cuisine as a true telling of character in China. The care put into a dish wasn’t unique to the realm of restaurants but also extended into her experiences with family homes. She really appreciated the notion that “food was really important to bring the family together,” often seeing whole generational lines of a family employed at the same restaurant from the “grandma taking the orders” to “sons and nephews” helping prepare ornate dishes with their fathers behind the kitchen counter.

Amy and her fellow program participants also used the pervasive street food culture in China as a way to practice their language skills and take advantage of the number of different cuisines available in much more accessible ways than Minnesota, such as “on the back of bikes riding through the city.”

Experiencing another culture through how it employs cuisine can tell you much more about how family and communities bond in ways that may differ from what is seen as mainstream American food culture.

As I look for more stories to cover in this column, I welcome people to contact me and share their stories about how food played a role in their experiences while abroad.