13 · RESEARCH
Research Agenda and Data Downloads
One page for researchers and teachers: a scholarly chronology (each entry marked with its evidence tier and whether it carries competing accounts or open questions), the questions this site says are still open, and structured data to download. The chronology and the bibliography are exported automatically from the site’s own pages and follow them; when citing, give the page, the version number and the access date.
CHRONOLOGY
Scholarly chronology
Taken from the timeline on the Life & Era page, with each entry’s evidence label kept; full detail text is in the CSV below. The “Competing / open” column is flagged automatically from keywords (such as “side by side”, “disputed”, “to be determined”, “two accounts”); it is a finding aid, not a judgement.
| Year | Event | Evidence | Competing / open |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1921 | Born in Miaoshan Village, Laojun Town, Ziyang, Sichuan | Confirmed by official eulogy | |
| 1929 (age 9) | Organized roasting locusts to feed the hungry during a plague | ||
| 1933 (age 12) | Left home on foot for Chengdu to learn cooking, without telling his parents | ||
| 1934.3—1936.4 1936.5—1939.1 | Apprenticed under Zhou Guangting and Chen Changming, systematic training | First-hand account | ◆ |
| 1938 (age 17–18) | Rose to fame at General Pan Wenhua’s birthday banquet | ||
| 1939—1947 | Illness, itinerant cooking, and volunteer service during the War of Resistance | ||
| 1944 | Married Jiang Mingshu; joined Duoyi Canteen | ||
| 1949—1950s | Liberation of Chengdu; served delegates and volunteer soldiers | ||
| 1957 | Transferred to Shengdengsi State-Run Restaurant in Chengdu; joined the Chinese Communist Party | ◆ | |
| 1959 | Summoned to Beijing on Zhou Enlai’s directive to establish the Sichuan Restaurant; served as its first Executive Chef | First-hand account | ◆ |
| 1959.9 | Zhou Enlai inspects the site under construction, insists on keeping an “Erbei Dining Room” for ordinary customers | Disciple’s account | |
| 1959.9.7 | First entry into Zhongnanhai’s Juxiangshu Study to cook for Mao Zedong | First-hand account | ◆ |
| 1961 | Banquet venue abruptly changed from the Great Hall of the People to Zhongnanhai: Norodom Sihanouk’s state dinner emergency relocation | Unverified | ◆ |
| 1959—1966 | Three entries into Zhongnanhai; served party and state leaders and foreign dignitaries | First-hand account | ◆ |
| 1966—1976 | Impact of the Cultural Revolution; faced pressure from rebel factions | ||
| 1972—1973 | Returned to Beijing a second time to rebuild the Sichuan Restaurant | ◆ | |
| 1981 | Visit by King Juan Carlos I of Spain | First-hand account | ◆ |
| 1982.11.5 | Deng Xiaoping hosted Prince Norodom Sihanouk at the Sichuan Restaurant | Corroborated by physical receipt | ◆ |
| 1981 / 1986 | Twice declined high salaries, chose to stay on | ||
| 1981.12 | Elected as a representative to the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress | First-Hand Object | |
| 1984.1.1 | Great Hall of the People New Year’s Day Gathering | Confirmed by physical order receipt | ◆ |
| 1986.1 | Received commendation from Beijing Culinary Association | Physical certificate | |
| 1986 | Awarded the title “Special-Grade Chinese Chef” by the Beijing Municipal People’s Government | Unverified | ◆ |
| 1987 | Dispatched to establish a Jiamusi branch | First-hand account | |
| 1987.8.8—8.28 | Led eight master chefs to Singapore for performances, took the Lion City by storm | Physical reproduction | ◆ |
| 1989 | Received China Culinary Association commendation for “over thirty years in culinary work” | Physical certificate | |
| 1989 / 1991 | Published two books | ||
| 1991.9.10 | Appointed as Culinary Instructor | Physical certificate | ◆ |
| 1991—1992 | Supported disciple Xiao Jianming’s decision to stay at “Jinshuiyuan” instead of returning to Beijing | Disciple’s oral account | |
| 1992 | Awarded “World Chefs Association” Eastern Cuisine Annual Honor | “First” designation disputed | ◆ |
| 1993.1.16 | Sudden death from heart attack at age 71 (the obituary’s “aged 72” counts in the traditional Chinese way) | ||
| Posthumous | Culinary techniques listed in Ziyang Municipal Intangible Cultural Heritage Inventory | Official recognition | |
| 2024.7 | The Sichuan Restaurant itself receives the “Beijing Old Brand” designation | Official recognition |
OPEN QUESTIONS
Open research questions
The questions below are still open on this site. The third column only repeats what the site itself says is needed; where it shows “—”, the site does not say what would settle the point, and any lead is welcome. Disagreements that stand side by side without needing further proof are in Corrections and Disputed Points.
| Question | Current accounts | What the site says is still needed |
|---|---|---|
| Printings and total print run of “Authentic Sichuan Cuisine: 160 …” after 2001 | Copyright-page evidence is verified up to the 16th printing in 2001, about 931,000 copies; the web claim of “nearly five million copies for the two books” is not supported by the verified printings | Copyright pages of the printings after 2001 |
| At which printing “160 Dishes” became “160 Kinds” | The cover and CIP data of the first printing (December 1991) read “160 Dishes”; the electronic manuscript’s cover reads “160 Kinds”; presumed to have changed during the 17 successive reprints | Covers and copyright pages of the individual printings (the site says “not yet examined”) |
| Date of the 1959 trial banquet at the Sichuan Restaurant | Autobiography: 4 August; Chen Tinglong’s article: 28 August; both agree on 1 October for the formal opening | — |
| Year he joined the Party | Disciple Xiao Jianming’s oral account: 1957; the 1993 workplace obituary: March 1959; the Digital Archive also holds a “Party-membership record” (PH-027) whose date is still to be determined | The date of PH-027 |
| Year of the “Special-Grade Technician” title | The 1993 workplace obituary: conferred at the first Beijing naming ceremony for special-grade technicians (recorded here as 1986); Xiao Jianming: approved in 1978 by the Beijing municipal government as a special first-grade cook | — |
| Number of cooks assembled in the second Beijing mission, 1972–73 | “12” (the autobiography’s own words) / “over thirty” / “over 60 in two waves” (Chen Tinglong’s 1988 article) | — |
| Foreign guests received: “George H. W. Bush” | 1987 official material: “US Secretary of State Vance”; a family-written text a year later: “Bush”; “Sichuan Cuisine at State Banquets” (2017) says Chen Tinglong received Bush and Whitlam | Direct confirmation from an independent source (the site still does not treat it as confirmed) |
| Choe Yong-gon’s visit and the “Chollima Medal” | Recorded here as 1962; articles collected on the News page also give 1963 and 1956; the medal’s background has two accounts, 1962 and 1986 | — |
| Whether Chen Songru was the “first head of the kitchen team” | In several long articles on the News page, an author notes that “some readers have objected; to be verified” | — |
| Whether “Huang Shaoqing of Fuhuayuan”, named in Luo Guorong’s lineage, is the same person as Chen Songru’s teacher “Huang Shaoqing” (黄邵清) | The names are very similar; the Lineage page lists it as a lead to be verified, not as confirmed | — |
| Variant spellings of names in the autobiography: 韩伯成 / 朴柏成, 殷玉昆 / 段玉昆 | Each pair is written both ways in the autobiography; Sun Jishi’s name is consistent | Which record is correct has yet to be examined |
| Xiao Jianming’s 1987 assignment to set up the Jiamusi branch | Recorded so far only in Xiao Jianming’s single oral account | Further independent sources |
| When the 37-page manuscript was begun and fair-copied | The fair copy itself records an anecdote from 1980, a lower bound for its date, which agrees with the “80.10.28 lecture” inscription on the bound volume | The exact dates of beginning and fair-copying are to be determined; this site does not assert them |
| Producer and date of the roughly 7½-minute personal documentary at the end of the 1987 Singapore tape | It was filmed in Beijing and has nothing to do with the Singapore trip; the producer (a television station) and the date are still to be confirmed, so the exhibition page leaves it out | The producer and the date |
| Objects still to be collected and people still to be identified | Three Digital Archive entries are marked “to be collected” (known to exist, not yet obtained as objects or with permission), such as CE-004, the China Cuisine Association honorary-councillor appointment letter; some group photographs contain people not yet identified; one certificate’s issuing seal is blurred and its name not fully read | The objects or images; leads from anyone who can identify the people and dates |
DATA
Data downloads
All files are UTF-8 CSV (with a BOM, so Excel opens them correctly) or JSON. The chronology and the bibliography are exported separately for each language edition; the other files are language-neutral.
| File | Contents | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| chronology-en.csv | Scholarly chronology (the same as on this page, with the full detail text) | Fields: year, event, evidence tier (first = first-hand / indep = independent / object = physical / bio = biographical / doubt = disputed), evidence label, whether it contains competing accounts or open questions, detail |
| bibliography-en.csv | Press and bibliography list: every link entry on the News page | Fields: section, title and source, URL, note, evidence tier, other links |
| dishes.csv | Names of the 16 lesson-page dishes in eight languages, with links | Names come from the site’s termbase and are this site’s standard renderings |
| collection-registry.csv | Collection register of the Digital Archive | Number, title, date, dimensions, ownership, source and evidence strength; includes “to be collected” entries; the book (BK) entries carry edition and print-run information |
| fixity-manifest.csv | File fixity manifest | Per-file SHA-256, for checking that a downloaded file matches the site’s |
| manifest.json | IIIF manifest of the 37-page manuscript | Page-level manifest; the site is statically hosted and offers no IIIF image API |
USE AND CITATION
Use and citation
- The evidence tiers in the chronology and the bibliography follow the site’s four-tier labelling (see About · Evidence strength method): first-hand means first-person writing by himself or by a direct participant (his eldest son Chen Tinglong, his direct disciple Liu Zihua and others); independent means a third party with no direct link to the family or the circle of disciples.
- When citing, give the page, the version number and the access date; snapshots of the whole site are also deposited at Zenodo (DOI) and the Internet Archive, as shown at the top of the Changelog page.
- The text and data here are offered under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 as stated on the About page; original scans, photographs and footage of the collection are outside this licence, so check the item-by-item ownership in the Digital Archive before using them.
- If you find an error in the chronology or the bibliography, write to info@chensongru.com as described under Corrections and Disputed Points.