This hybrid framing challenges the idea that vegetarianism in China is simply a “return” to tradition. Instead, it seems like a negotiation of multiple moral vocabularies. It makes me wonder whether this hybridity stabilizes vegetarianism (by giving people many entry points) or destabilizes it (by diluting any single motivation).

This is so nostalgia-laced. It highlights to me how economic change reshapes the emotional meaning of food.

I find this compelling because it suggests that ethical exploration is happening outside traditional religious institutions. It makes me rethink how moral life is structured in contemporary China not necessarily through doctrine and orthodox practices, but through everyday consumption spaces

I am so glad that Schumann included these lines because Lu's dilemma really resonates with me. Her willingness to articulate doubt complicates the narrative of her as a devout Buddhist. It showcases the struggle one feels while trying to maintain reason and rationale alongside their faith. I truly empathise with her.

These lines suggest that Lu's transformation wasn’t superficial but doctrinally grounded. I find myself wondering why this specific text had such an impact like was it the karmic logic, the moral urgency, or the clarity of Yinguang’s system? It challenges my tendency to separate “intellectual reading” from “life practice.

This line reveals the intellectual context Lu was pushing against at that time. I’m struck by how entrenched these Orientalist hierarchies were like Pure Land is dismissed as “corrupt” just because it doesn’t match Western expectations of textual purity. It helps me appreciate and understand why Lu felt the need to intervene internationally.

This really stood out to me because it reframes Lu not just as a religious thinker but as someone consciously using Buddhist ethics to intervene in global political debates. I hadn’t thought of vegetarianism as something Chinese Buddhists mobilized outwards toward the world rather than just internally within China.

This information feels so hypocritical and contradictory to everything stated in the article till now. Everything in Buddhist doctrine frames alcohol as karmically dangerous, yet the lived practice of lay Buddhist societies in Dunhuang treat alcohol almost like an administrative need like part of budgets, festivals, hospitality, even labor compensation. This shows to me that Buddhism wasn’t a sealed moral universe; it was entangled with the logistical and social economy of its environment.

This allegory feels like Tang China negotiating its own moral identity. Mr. Tea embodies Buddhist rationality, self-control, and enlightenment; Mr. Alcohol defends ritual, history, and community joy. What’s interesting is that neither wins, Mr. Water does, which might symbolize the Daoist idea of balance or the Buddhist Middle Path(not sure?) . The story feels less like propaganda and more like acceptance of the fact that moral reform can’t erase pleasure entirely.

Is there any evidence in literature of that time for this claim to hold ture?

It would be interesting to read further about how the common folks (lower class people who were not monks) adapted to this shift from alcohol to tea. Were the non devout lay-people consuming alcohol and were they able to make this shift from consuming alcohol to tea (when it started being considered a rare commodity and the habit of drinking it became a sophisticated aesthetic)?

I am actually taken aback by this information as I had assumed (due to popular contemporary depictions of the Chinese culture) that tea was always the primary beverage consumed by the Chinese. It is shocking to find out that it was initially alcohol.

This is such a tender moment to read about. Instead of treating Western food as foreign, Gu relates it back to something deeply Chinese. It’s a small but powerful reversal of finding continuity instead of difference. Feels like cosmopolitanism here is emotional, even sensory, not just intellectual.

This feels like the heart of the paper, like the foreign has lost its aura. That’s a powerful marker of China’s confidence and also globalization’s saturation. When everything is global, nothing feels foreign anymore

Love this metaphor. It reframes globalization from something people endure to something they compose. Makes me think maybe culture is less about resistance or domination, and more about the constant rewriting of everyday life. There’s agency here, but it’s improvisational

This line really shows how food becomes political language. The state didn’t just let McDonald’s in it used it as evidence of success. Almost like fast food became propaganda for reform like a symbol of “we made it.” It’s unsettling how something as mundane as a burger can serve ideological power.

This line for me captures the essence of culinary modernism. The 1990s imagination of Western food as a solution to Chinese backwardness. Xu shows how the “foreign” was symbolically tied to modernity and progress, constructing a semiotic hierarchy that positioned the West as model and China as pupil. It’s also where she critiques older modernization narratives.

I think Xu’s most important conceptual move is that she redefines globalization as co-bricolage, emphasizing networks of overlapping creativity rather than a single direction of influence. This challenges the global/local binary by focusing on process, interaction, and multiplicity rather than hierarchy. It’s the theoretical backbone of her whole paper.