a sequel anthology. The work is classified under the biji fiction genre), but they are anecdotes collected over many years, purporting to be actual events recorded by the author. Gastronomic work The food writer Fuchsia Dunlop has described Yuan as "China’s Brillat-Savarin," and Endymion Wilkinson called him one of the four classical gastronomes. In a time when the taste among his contemporaries was for opulence and exotic display, Yuan stood for the "orthodox" style. "Nowadays," he wrote, "at the start of the feast the menu is about a hundred feet long". This is "mere display, not gastronomy". After one such dinner Yuan returned home and cooked congee to appease his hunger. He instructed cooks "do not fuss with the natural state of the food just to show that you are a clever cook. Bird's nest is beautiful -- why shape it into balls?" Yuan criticized his contemporary Li Liweng's magnolia pudding as "created by artifice". Yuan also resented what he regarded as the corruption of Chinese food by Manchu cooks. The appeal of Manchu cooking was in their stews and roasts, while Chinese cooked broths and soups, but when Manchus serve Chinese dinners and Chinese serve Manchu food, "we lose our originality" and we "toady to each other". Yuan published his recipes and thoughts on cooking in his 1792 gastronomic manual and cookbook The Way of Eating. A complete and annotated translation was published in 2019. Editions and translations Yuan Mei, Yingzhong Wang and Yingzhi Wang, eds. (Sui Yuan Shi Dan). Nanjing: Feng huang chubanshe, 2006. . translations Further reading Arthur Waley. Yuan Mei, Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956 References Citations Bibliography External links 随园食单 (Sui Yuan Shi Dan) Chinese text Suiyuan Shidan (隨園食單) English translation 1716 births 1797 deaths 18th-century Chinese painters 18th-century Chinese poets 18th-century LGBT people Chinese cuisine Chinese LGBT writers Poets from Zhejiang Qing dynasty painters Qing dynasty poets Painters from Zhejiang Writers from Hangzhou