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Eating Better than Gods and Ancestors

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Of Tripod and Palate

Abstract

In late classical and early medieval China, practitioners developed dietary regimens that claimed to make them transcendents (xian 仙)—deathless, superhuman beings.1 The question I wish to explore is simple, though the answer is not: it concerns not so much what seekers of transcendence ate (or were represented as eating) but what they did not eat; more, it concerns what their diet meant.

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Authors
  1. Robert F. Campany
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Roel Sterckx

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© 2005 Roel Sterckx

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Campany, R.F. (2005). Eating Better than Gods and Ancestors. In: Sterckx, R. (eds) Of Tripod and Palate. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979278_6

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