COVID-19 DISPATCHES | Edited by Michelle T. King, Jia-Chen Fu, Miranda Brown, and Donny Santacaterina Rumor, Chinese Diets, and COVID-19: Questions and Answers about Chinese Food and Eating Habits as the coronavirus emerged as a global pandemic dur- ing early 2020, ‘‘ground zero’’ of the disease was initially named in the press as the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, in central China. With a population of over 11 million residents, and as a major transportation hub situated on the Yangtze River, Wuhan was placed under strict lockdown at the end of January by Chinese authorities, with severe restrictions on travel and movement. These efforts at containment proved too late to prevent the eventual spread of the virus around the world. The dramatic global impact of the virus has been all too painfully clear, yet the exact origins and zoonotic transmission pathway of the virus remain uncertain. Scientists suggest that SARS-CoV-2 probably jumped from horseshoe bats to an unknown intermediate animal vector, from which it spread to humans, but exactly how, where, and when this happened is still unknown (Cyranoski 2020). The social impacts of the coronavirus pandemic have not been limited to public health and the economy. Anti-Chinese bias incidents have been on the rise around the world, with President Trump and his supporters insisting on calling the coronavirus a ‘‘Chinese virus’’ or using the even more overtly racist epithet of ‘‘kung flu.’’ The idea that exotic Chinese eating habits and unhygienic wet markets are to blame for the coronavirus have led many around the world, including Australia’s prime minister and US congressional lawmakers, to call for a wholesale ban on all wildlife wet markets globally (Neuman 2020). More scurrilous versions of these anti- Chinese sentiments have also circulated on the internet, with claims that the Chinese eat raw bats and video footage of Chinese people, supposedly in Wuhan, eating ‘‘bat soup’’ (Rozsa 2020; Palmer 2020). What exactly is a wet market? Why are they so popular in China? Do Chinese people really eat bats and other wildlife? If so, why? Why don’t they ban these markets, when so many zoonotic diseases come from China? How might we think more critically about wildlife consumption, zoonotic dis- eases, and their relationship to our food supply? As Chinese food historians, we wanted to share our perspectives on these and other related questions with a broad public. On May 14, 2020, we held a public virtual panel discussion on ‘‘Rumor, Chinese Diets, and COVID-19: Questions and Answers about Chinese Food and Eating Habits,’’ with Miranda Brown (Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Professor of Chinese Stud- ies, Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan), Wendy Jia-Chen Fu (Associate Professor, Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures, Emory University), and Michelle T. King (Associate Professor, History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Donny Santacaterina (doctoral candidate, History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) served as moderator. The panel was spon- sored by the Carolina Asia Center and the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The opinions expressed here are the speakers’ own and do not represent the views of any other entity. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity; the full recording can be viewed at https://covid19asia.unc.edu/2020/05/234/. ***** ON WET MARKETS DONNY SANTACATERINA ( DS ): I think we should start from the supposed ground zero of the virus. What exactly is a wet market? Why is it called a ‘‘wet’’ market in English? The Chinese term in Taiwan is just ‘‘traditional market’’ (chuan- tong shichang). gastronomica: the journal for food studies, vol.21, number 1, pp. 77–82, issn 1529-3262, electronic issn 1533-8622.  2021 by the regents of the university of california. all rights reserved. please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the university of california press s reprints and permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-ermissions. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2021.21.1.77. GASTRONOMICA 77 SPRING 2021 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/gastronomica/article-pdf/21/1/77/454275/gfc.2021.21.1.77.pdf by guest on 06 October 2021