This paper focuses on Eileen Chang’s essay “On Eating and Drawing Cakes to Stave off Hunger” published in 1980 to explore her writing techniques and neglected accomplishment with Italo Calvino’s writing principles. Part I discusses the essay’s images of “lightness”, and part II explores the symbolic level of its “lightness”, its gastronomy and Chang’s life vision about eating and nothingness. Part III discusses its “quickness.” Part IV proves this essay to be the first successful and sophisticated encyclopedic writing in Chinese essay writings. It jumps from the simple framework of “food essays” to a journey of senses filled with synthesia, a multi-cultural study, an anthropological study and more. Part V first analyses how this essay reflects a postmodern eating environment, and then discusses how it deconstructs Chinese literary arena in terms of food writing by showing her visions about the contrasts between China/ the world, home/ abroad, nostalgia/ non-nostalgia, feast dishes/ side dishes, eating together/ eating alone, local food/ fusion food, original flavors/ simulacrum.
