Cooking the Mongols/Feeding the Han: Dietary and Ethnic Intersections in Inner Mongolia FRANCK BILLÉ University of Cambridge, UK franck.bille@gmail.com ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the changing practices and percep- tions of the Han residing in Inner Mongolia. Arguing that studies of Inner Mongolia all too frequently focus exclusively on the Mongols, and that the few Han appearing in them tend to be portrayed as agents of modernization and acculturation, the article seeks to challenge this limiting framework and to pro- pose a more integrative approach. Taking dietary practices as its focus, the article suggests that the consumption patterns of foods traditionally marked as ‘ethnic’ do not neatly follow ethnic boundaries, and that limiting ethnographies of the region to the Mongols in fact obscures and conceals the numerous trends that cut across ethnic lines. Keywords: Inner Mongolia, Mongols, Han, food consumption, milk, dairy products, ethnicity On the steppe Frontier there was an entirely different equation of advance and recoil. Here the main body of the Chinese could not advance intact. The land and the climate constrained those who moved out too far in advance of the main body to become more and more a different kind of people (Lattimore 1988 [1940]: 472) Since the 1990s – a trend increasing in the 2000s – numerous books and articles have been published in Europe and America about the relationship between the Han and the minorities (minzu) living on China’s soil. Very often these works tend to echo positions influenced by Spivak’s and Said’s seminal works on post- colonialism (Spivak 1987; Said 2003): minority identities are posited in opposition to a dominating Han presence; as a result, such studies have generally focused on state policies about language (Bilik 1998; Dwyer 1998), education (Borchigud 1996a; Hansen 1999; Postiglione 1999) or on the notions of internal colonialism and imposition of Han values (Schein 2000; 2002; Blum 2001). Typically, these relationships are depicted as those of a powerful centre with a Inner Asia 11 (2009): 205–230 © 2009 Global Oriental Ltd