Territories: A Trans-Cultural Journal of Regional Studies

How does food operate as a medium for informal diplomacy between individuals and nations? In what ways do citizen culinary diplomacy and individual gastrodiplomacy diverge from official or state-sponsored culinary exchanges? This article examines these questions through the experiences of two American POWs from the Korean War, Morris R. Wills and Clarence Adams, focusing on food as a site of private, people-to-people interaction. As POWs in Korea and later as foreign guests in China, Adams and Wills navigated identities suspended between official representation and personal agency, granting them unique access to Chinese diplomats and political elites. How did their trajectories evolve after returning to the United States during the Cultural Revolution? Wills attained a prestigious position at Harvard in the late 1960s, while Adams became the first African American millionaire through his ownership of a Chinese restaurant chain in the 1970s. While Wills prioritized survival—securing basic livelihood—Adams leveraged culinary entrepreneurship as a means of self-empowerment. Adams’ story, in particular, illuminates the role of semi-official food diplomacy and citizen culinary diplomacy in fostering cross-cultural understanding during a critical phase of U.S.-China relations.