本文以北川人飲食文化中的幾種穀糧爲例，說明因其物質性以及在當地人類經濟生態中的地位，它們被人們賦予種種社會文化象徵意義；如玉米隱喻著人們賴以爲生的一般糧食，青稞隱喻藏族或少數民族的糧食。蕎麥，過去被本地「漢人」視爲「蠻子的食物」，然而在1950年代以來，當愈來愈多的山間村民成爲羌族後，它們被本地知識分子視爲「羌族特色食物」與「羌族穀神」。將人們有關這些穀類食物的行爲、言談與書寫視爲種種社會表徵（或文本），本文分析產生這些表徵同時亦受其修飾的社會本相（或情境）及其變遷過程。社會本相在本文中主要指的是人類族群區分（漢人與蠻子，漢族與羌族）；在此區分下，爲了追求較優越或較安全的身分，日常生活經常接觸的人們以祖源與生活習俗（飲食爲其中要素）相互誇耀、譏諷或模仿、攀附，如此之種種表徵造成明清時期北川人的漢化，在近數十年類似的過程又讓他們成爲羌族。

Taking as examples several varieties of food grain featured in the dietary culture of the people of Beichuan (Northern Sichuan), this article explores how these food grains have, in accordance with their material qualities and their place in the economic life of local people, been endowed with various kinds of social and cultural symbolism. For instance, maize symbolizes the ordinary grain on which people rely for subsistence, while highland barley symbolizes the grain of Tibetans or other minority ethnic groups. Buckwheat, which in the past was seen by Han people in the area as 'the food of barbarians' has, as a consequence of more and more mountain villagers being classed as Qiang from the 1950s onwards, come to be seen by local educated people as the 'typical food of the Qiang' and as 'the grain deity of the Qiang.' By treating the practices, oral discourses and writings relating to these food grains as social representations (or texts), this article analyses the social reality (or circumstances) that simultaneously produces these representations and is modified by them, as well as analysing the processes of the transformation of that reality. In this article, social reality refers mainly to the division of people into ethnic groups (Han Chinese and barbarians; Han people and Qiang people); in the light of these divisions, people, in pursuit of superior or more secure status, tend to glorify, satirize, imitate or attach themselves to those they encounter in daily life, in conjunction with their ancestral origins or life customs, taking diet as a key element. In the Ming and Qing these representations led to the sinification of the people of Beichuan; in recent decades an analogous process has caused them to become Qiang