China in Seven Banquets ranges through 5,000 years of China’s food history in seven iconic meals, from the opulent Eight Treasures fête to the ‘Tail-Burning’ banquet of the Tang Dynasty and the Qing court’s extravagant ‘complete Manchu-Han feast’. We also experience lavish repasts from literature and film, a New Year’s buffet from 1920s Shanghai and a delivery menu from the hyper-global twenty-first century, and even peek at the tables of the not-so-distant future. Drawing upon decades of experience eating his way around China, Beijing-based historian Thomas David DuBois explains why culinary fashions come and go, as well as recreates dozens of historical recipes in a modern kitchen. From fermented elk to absinthe cocktails, this is Chinese food as you’ve never seen it before.