[China News March, 15th] According to Sino Vision Net quoting a Sino Vision report, University of California, Davis established the world's first Confucius Institute focusing on Food Culture in September, 2015. Food is very important just as the saying goes “Food is the paramount necessity for people, while taste is the most important of food”. Both UC Davis in America and Jiangnan University in China are world-famous leaders in the fields of Food Science and Fermentation technology. With the significance of food culture combining with the disciplinary strength of the two universities, the Confucius institute came into being naturally. Since its founding, it has become a new platform for the promotion of food culture and academic cooperation. Now, learning to make Chinese dishes is becoming a hot trend among UC Davis faculty staff and students.

Michael Brown, a veteran faculty staff at UC Davis, has long been a cuisine lover. Since the founding of the Confucius Institute, he has been signing up for all the lectures it organized.

He said, “I can make Mediterranean dishes, Mexican dishes, French dishes, etc. but not Chinese dishes. I’m glad that we’ve got a Confucius Institute here, my dreams came true eventually. All people here are nice. Cooking and foods bring people enjoyable tastes and heartfelt warmth. These are what I have learned here."

The establishment of the Confucius Institute opened a door for teachers and students accustomed to western food to taste oriental food. It has brought out the “cultural cards” of Chinese Food, Tea and Wine, and has become a center for Chinese food and beverage culture promotion as well as east-west academic cooperation.

Liu Lixia, Vice Dean of the Confucius Institute on behalf of Jiangnan University, said, “We’ve organized Chinese snack workshops to teach how to make a series of snacks such as steamed dumplings, dumplings, fried dumplings, glutinous rice dumplings. Also, we’ve put out small lectures on Chinese food culture such as slicing techniques and heat control, rich in taste and medicine food homology. These workshops were so warmly received that their online registration quota was usually booked up within 24 hours.

Michelle Yeh, Dean of Confucius Institute at UC Davis, said, “We, without doubt, first try to make a combination between eastern and western cultures. Also, our focus is on food culture as well as tea and wine culture. For example, Chinese wine is totally different with western wine, so we find it’s meaningful to make such combination for UC Davis professors and students as well as people in entire Northern California community. In fact we’ve got some good results."