Maybe never before the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and the Cookbook Fair have been so much as the Olympics than this year in Beijing. For more than one week the Daxing Hotel and the San Glory Hotel in Beijing-Daxing District became a kind of an Olympic village with hundreds of cookbook professionals from all around the world.

The Beijing Cookbook Fair took place at Daxing Hotel from 19 to 21 May. Furthermore the international guests have been invited to several professional events and of course also some sightseeing. For those, who have been there, it has been an outstanding experience. “I like the cosmopolitan style this fair has”, said Gourmand Award-winning cookbook-author Pascale Naessens from Belgium. “I met so many lovely people from all around the world and it was just fabulous to make friendship with authors from New Zealand and Kenya, which whom I had dinner after the awards.”

For many cookbook professionals the Beijing Cookbook Fair was the opportunity to makes first contacts with Chinese publishers and printers. The foreign rights center became an important meeting point during these days. “The meetings with the Chinese publishers have been very intense. Some took over one hour”, say Suzanne Smith of US-publisher Knopf. “The Chinese were very interested in our books and especially our all time best seller Julia Child attracted much demand.”

The Beijing Cookbook Fair was also a huge media event. The national broadcasting company CCTV was present during the whole fair and made interviews with many of the guest from the west. Long features were also shot with French chef Cyril Rouquet and UK celebrity chef James McIntosh, who is a star in China because of his award-winning TV series “Food from the Silk Road”. Both, McIntosh and Rouquet, had also a photo-session for the cover of the biggest Chinese food magazine “East Eat” by Beijing Cookbook Fair President of Honour, Liu Guangwei.

 

At Daxing Theater the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards took place. For the first time they have been extended to two evenings. Mainly they have been the wine book awards on the first and the cookbook awards on the second evening. The awards were followed by dinners at Daxing Hotel. But as usually the party got on. And for some winners the party can´t be long enough.