Waste on the Tip of the Tongue: Social Eating Livestreams (Chibo) in the Age of Chinese Affluence

Abstract

This article investigates Chinese social eating livestreams (chibo) in the context of China’s 2020 campaign against food waste. It argues that the subgenre ‘big stomach kings’, a target of the campaign, evinces the moral implications of Chinese affluence, of which food waste is exemplary. The emerging affluence in China has normalized conspicuous, wasteful consumption and given rise to a local form of flaunting wealth called ‘xuanfu’. Chinese social media are inundated with xuanfu images, a symptom of the necessary psychosocial adaptation to affluence. Isolating the ‘big stomach kings’ livestreams from the social context of xuanfu, the anti-waste campaign glosses over the underlying social issue of the vast wealth gap between the affluent and the poor. To expose the ethical controversy of these livestreams, the article also analyzes their gender politics by parsing the mystifying image of female ‘big stomach kings’, whose slim bodies are in stark contrast to their enormous appetites.