道德口味：香港潮籍盂蘭勝會祭鬼食物的意義

Moral Taste: Food for Ghosts in Hong Kong’s Chaozhou Hungry Ghosts Festival

有關「味」的研究，學者主要從兩方面進行討論。第一是口味的社會意義，包括性別、階級與族群等。第二是口味與心靈意義的關係，近年的研究也涉及口味與認知和象徵意義的關係。本文進一步提出人們的口味往往與認知上的道德觀念有密切的關係，並且以香港潮州人舉辦的潮籍盂蘭勝會為例子，分析人們對儀式中祭品的口味的一些改變。本文論述人們對於這些祭祀上採用的食品，在不同的時代會選擇遺棄它或食用它，這種祭祀食物口味的改變恰恰反映了不同的社會、政治、經濟脈絡下的道德倫理觀念。

Complexity of taste has been addressed by different scholars to highlight the social and spiritual meanings of food. The taste of food has also recently been studied in relation to its symbolic meaning from the cognitive perspective. This paper further suggests that moral taste explains the meanings of food at festivals. It takes the case of food offered to ghosts by the Chaozhou community in Hong Kong during the Chinese Hungry Ghosts Festival to examine how people’s tastes in relation to ritualized food change over time. The rejection and subsequent reclamation of ritualized food in different contexts and at various times will be analyzed as a reflection of changing moralities. I argue that changes in taste are closely related to changing morality in various socio-economic and political contexts.