This paper examines the shifting semantic cadences of the soybean as global economic conditions re-shaped Chinese scientific and medical enthusiasm for the soybean. Older associations as a famine crop, base for fertilizer, a source for cooking, lubrication, and lighting joined newer, techno-scientific visions of the soybean as a global industrial commodity and modern foodstuff. Intensified imperialist competition between Japan and Russia transformed the agricultural and industrial landscape of northeastern China, and one byproduct of this competition was the transformation of the soybean into a global cash crop whose economic value lay well beyond its agricultural origins. The soybean, in this globalized context, captivated the attention of late Qing, early Republican intellectuals, because it portended a brave, new world driven by technological innovation, yet still organically tied to a notion of Chineseness. The Chinese anarchist Li Shizeng especially sought to enlighten his fellow countrymen about the soybean’s technological potential to revitalize and transform Chinese industry in a manner that also embraced its agricultural and culinary heritage. His efforts to raise the soybean’s profile by extolling its many industrial and gastronomic uses articulated a Chinese path of modernization and gestured to a more intimate re-appraisal of the meaning of food for an aspiring nation.
