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| Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jeffrey Alford, Naomi Duguid
Publisher: Artisan
Category: Book
List Price: $40.00
Buy New: $19.25
You Save: $20.75 (52%)
New (40) Used (11) from $18.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 6146
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 376
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.8
Dimensions (in): 11.4 x 9.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 1579653014
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.59515
EAN: 9781579653019
ASIN: 1579653014
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A bold and eye-opening new cookbook with magnificent photos and unforgettable stories.
In the West, when we think about food in China, what usually comes to mind are the signature dishes of Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai. But beyond the urbanized eastern third of China lie the high open spaces and sacred places of Tibet, the Silk Road oases of Xinjiang, the steppelands of Inner Mongolia, and the steeply terraced hills of Yunnan and Guizhou. The peoples who live in these regions are culturally distinct, with their own history and their own unique culinary traditions. In Beyond the Great Wall, the inimitable duo of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid—who first met as young travelers in Tibet—bring home the enticing flavors of this other China.
For more than twenty-five years, both separately and together, Duguid and Alford have journeyed all over the outlying regions of China, sampling local home cooking and street food, making friends and taking lustrous photographs. Beyond the Great Wall shares the experience in a rich mosaic of recipes—from Central Asian cumin-scented kebabs and flatbreads to Tibetan stews and Mongolian hot pots—photos, and stories. A must-have for every food lover, and an inspiration for cooks and armchair travelers alike.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 explore the cuisines of the other china May 10, 2008
26 out of 29 found this review helpful
Despite the glossy cover, this cookbook has been over 20 years in the making. It dates back to the authors' travels in tibet in the 80s, and then when plans for the book were made by their book agent, of further research trips in the 00s. Having visited China during the same timeframe dating to the 80s, I can attest to the wonderment of discovering the "other" China, of meeting caucasian chinese citizens from turkic tribes who speak perfect mandarin, of tasting perfect kebobs and roasts from mongolian and muslims cooks, of the religious mysticism of tibet. and it is this exotic "other" china on which this book is based on.
Since authentic cookbooks of even relatively well known minorities such as tibetans are hard to come by in english (and I suspect in chinese as well), it is a real treat to discover the cuisines of the uighurs and the mongols, and the dai and the hani, albeit for the most part reverse-engineered by the authors. Interspersed between the recipes are the authors' travel anecdotes of varying quality.
Indeed, it is their traveller's perspective passing through and re-engineering the dishes that admittedly exposes my own bias and ultimately my reservations about the book. With the bar for cookbooks set ever higher, the gold standard is for ethnic cookbooks to be written by cultural residents in the locales where the food is from, whether native or adopted, these people have had presumably years of experience making the food, as well as, the language skills and acumen(to get published!) in order to communicate this to us in the western mass market.
i certainly await the day when an enterprising young tuvan or uighur can share her grandmother's recipes with us (perhaps most likely in a blog rather than a glossy cookbook) but until that day comes, this book will remain a treasure.
i've had the pleasure of attending a forum hosted by james oseland, inviting jeff and naomi to discuss their new book. but i paid for my copy and do not have any financial disclosures to declare.
 Beyond The Great Wall... Is Beyond a Great Cookbook! May 28, 2008
16 out of 21 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2WGMJBM41SKM Beyond the Great Wall... Beyond a Great cookbook.Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China
It's a cookbook July 2, 2008
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
To the gentleman from china with the one-star rating. Patriotism can be a good thing. But this is a cookbook -- it's not a political tract. I own all the cookbooks this pair of folks has put out. They're wonderful writers, photographers and cooks. They show us all part of the world we'll never get to see.
Do they have opinions about Tibet ... quite possibly. I haven't received the book yet. But you waste your energy is posting a review like you did. It works against you, sir, and undercuts your cause. Reasonable people can disagree about the China/Tibet situation (can't they?). But to think that this cookbook is being released now to make a statement against China is just not plausible. China has plenty to be proud of (as the authors have shown in several of their earlier books). Your review does not reflect well on China.
Dazzling recipes and a wonderful ranging conversation with well-traveled, forthright friends May 20, 2008
14 out of 17 found this review helpful
As the Introduction states, the world's borders would look very different if based upon food and culture. Chinese Muslims don't eat pork, and in rural Tibet, chicken is considered inedible. There are papayas in the south of China, and millet in the hot arid regions.
Beyond The Great Wall layers many elements on a strong foundation of interesting recipes - maps, food anthropology, and travel notes, generously illustrated with the authors' truly spectacular location photos, and evocative studio photos by Richard Jung, each carefully captioned.
The recipes require few special ingredients, and when they do, the resulting combination is a revelation, such as chile paste spiked with Sichuan peppercorns, or pomegranate-marinated lamb kebabs. Each recipe is thoughtfully introduced with suggestions for meal combinations, the dish's origin, thoughts on timing and ease of preparation. Eating your vegetables will be more interesting with new takes on salad, soup and vegetable sides. The Beef-Sauced Hot Lettuce Salad was a huge hit in my house when I was recipe-testing for the authors.
The bread chapter includes flatbreads, a loaf baked in a lidded pot, and little stuffed breads. For experienced noodle-makers, the variations in shaping and saucing are fascinating. For those new to handmade noodles, the pinch method in Earlobe Noodles provides an easy introduction.
The book doesn't pretend to be a catalog of "authentic" recipes, which would have us searching for riverweed or camel meat, and drying yak cheese on a yak-dung fire. Rather, this is a cookbook for those who want to enjoy foods and flavors from that part of the world, respectfully translated into the Western kitchen. And for those interested in tasting at the source, there is advice on planning a trip and sample itineraries. Fans of the authors' previous books will appreciate that the travel stories are attributed to either Naomi or Jeff. Finally, the Glossary is a good read in itself - how sprouting changes the nutrients in beans, or how to choose and make the most of Sichuan peppercorns.
My advice: buy this book and engage it like you would a wonderful ranging conversation with well-traveled, forthright friends.
 Two broken pipes amid a chorus May 15, 2008
13 out of 194 found this review helpful
As Beijing Olympic Games approaches, people in China has been extremely busy and so have been those who are against China for one reason or another. Recently, we've witnessed the Lhasa riot, the overwhelmingly biased coverage by the Western media using fabricated footages, the often violent disruptions of the Olympic touch relay across major Western cities, and now, there is this "cook book".
First of all, the timing of this book is interesting. According to the authors, it was their long time editor who had commanded them to do this book. Equally revealing of a shared deep-rooted hatred and colonial bias against China is how the editor, and the authors call Tibet among themselves, instead of Tibet region of China, they refer it as par of the Central Asia, it shows that deep down, they really hate to see Tibet is part of China now, instead of part of India or the British Empire. And has anybody else noticed their collective eagerness to rush this "cook book" out before the Games? Coincidence or part of a pathetic, ill-intentioned collective effort orchestrated by some mysterious institution?
Once understand where those people came from, it's not hard to learn the hidden meaning behind the buzzword used in the sub title and throughout the book: the other China. China is consisted of 56 major ethic groups, while Han is the largest. The author claims that non-Han Chinese citizens "are not considered by the government to be Chinese" is totally false and seriously misleading! I wonder would the authors dare to highlight this false statement to the Chinese authority next time they apply for a visa to go to China (to make more money off her)?
The authors are heart-broken by the "many social changes" happened in China in the past 20 years. What's so terrible? Twenty years ago, the whole country was poor and so was the Tibet area. When a country is booming, people from relatively developed areas will migrate to less developed areas to make personal wealth, just like what Americans did in the migration west. If the authors really want to blame somebody, blame capitalism, not Chinese government, or maybe they secretly want the whole country still frozen in poverty so various cultural thieves, some are more ungrateful than others, can continue to get rich from there.
In conclusion, as a "cookbook", this is valueless! Just like no matter how many times you video tape Mike Tyson's game, you are still not qualified to publish a boxing textbook. Rather, this is a propaganda piece commanded by outside power to "tie-in" with the Olympic Games, so they can bark at the country and people whom so generously allowed them to poke around while getting handsome rewards from the Western capitalism system.
The question for the rest of us is: Should we pay to reward them as well?
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