From Food Culture to Future Living: Shiology Makes Splash at HK Book Fair
HONG KONG, Aug 8, 2025 - (ACN Newswire) - The 35th Hong Kong Book Fair was held at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from July 16 to 22, 2025. Organized by Hong Kong Trade Development Council, this year's theme was "Food Culture • Future Living." The event brought together publishers, authors, and readers to promote a culture of reading.
Sino United Publishing's subsidiaries, including Joint Publishing (H.K.) , Chung Hwa Book Company (H.K.), and The Commercial Press (H.K), participated in the exhibition, leasing over 200 booths and showcasing nearly 1,000 new titles, offering readers a rich literary feast.
Readers at the Joint Publishing (H.K.) Booth, 35th Hong Kong Book Fai
Among the titles exhibited by Joint Publishing, one book stood out for its alignment with the fair's theme, "Shiology", which garnered significant attention. Published in Hong Kong in 2025, the monograph introduces the definition of a new discipline, shiology, its research subject, objectives, discipline system and its subfields, fundamental principles, and research values, covering all aspects of human 'food + eating' affairs.
In today's world of rapid technological advancement and as the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals draw near, approximately 673 million people worldwide still struggle with hunger. The root cause lies in the lack of a comprehensive and holistic understanding of food-related issues. Shiology integrates fragmented and compartmentalized knowledge of 'food + eating' affairs into a unified framework, aiming to holistically address humanity's current food challenges by examining three key dimensions: eaters' needs, food acquisition, and shi order.
In delineating the epistemological framework of shiology, the monograph establishes a foundational lexicon for the discipline, such as "eater," "shiance" (a combination of shi and -ance, with shi referring both food and eating in Chinese), "shiology" (a combination of shi and -ology), and "shiorder" (a combination of shi and order). An “eater” refers to humans conceptualized through the lens of dietary needs, including all humans dependent on food, irrespective of age, gender, occupation, preference, etc. “Shiance” refers to the phenomena and human activities of food acquisition and its proper utilization. It includes wide range of practices and processes, including wild food utilization, food domestication, distribution, processing, consumption, as well as those related to laws, economy, administration and education so as to maintain shiorder. “Shiology” is a unified knowledge system that reveals the laws governing shiance, addresses its systemic challenges, analyzes the relationship between humans and food systems, and traces the historical evolution of shiance-related behaviors. “Shiorder” refers to the logic and continuity of human shiance behaviors, formally termed "shiance order". It serves as the foundation of social order — if shiorder collapses, so does social order. Improving shiorder can drive the progress of social civilization.
The monograph includes numerous additions and revisions compared to its simplified Chinese edition published in mainland China in 2020, making it the most comprehensive academic work on shiology to date. It will help promote the discipline's concepts and holistic governance solutions worldwide, contributing to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and systematically addressing global hunger.
The author, Liu Guangwei, is the director of the Research Center for Shiology at Renmin University of China, the founder of the shiology discipline system, chairman of the World Shiology Forum (WSF), and president of Beijing Shiology Research Institute. He entered the catering industry in 1983 and established the WSF in 2017, organizing four international conferences and releasing outcomes such as the Awaji Island Declaration and the Hainan Initiative.
