Have You Eaten?

Story told by PhilipText by Guo Ying

Have You Eaten?

Story told by PhilipText by Guo Ying

Buns Philosophy

One day after work,I was leaving with a Chinese colleague of mine.I told him that my Chinese wife was rewarding me with stuffed steamed buns that evening. After hearing this,this guy who holds office at Tianjin's Goubulibaozi's store said,“If there aren't 18 folds on the skin of the stuffed steamed bun,then it isn't a stuffed steamed bun.”When I got home, I told my wife what my co-worker had said,she just curled her lips and said,“You cannot judge a dumpling’s filling by its folds.”

A stuffed steamed bun can give rise to so much philosophy and wisdom.Chinese people's mentality that“food is the number one necessity”is reverenced and deeply respected by all westerners who have had any dealings with them.

Westerners often joke that Germans eat to live and Chinese live to eat.Chinese people need to remember,though, not to casually greet foreigners by asking them,“Have you eaten?”otherwise they will end up biting off more than they can chew and“packing a doggy bag”for themselves.

One unlucky Chinese international student saw a foreigner on his campusone evening and greeted him with a friendly,“Have you eaten?If not,come and eat with me.”To which the guy replied,“I haven't eaten.I would love to eat with you.I love Chinese food.”The Chinese international student was originally hoping for the standard answer to this question,“No that's okay,next time, thanks."The foreigner being impervious to reality forced this dear friend to take him begrudgingly,long-faced,back to his dorm.He was in luck.A Chinese girl just happened to be cooking at home.After unashamedly sweet taking the girl,these two guys,who are unable to cook,were able to freeload a dinner out of the girl.

A Homesick Stomach

Western men who have married Chinese wives often lament that you can take the girl out of China but you can never take the Chinese stomach out of the girl.

My Chinese wife often accompanies the Chinese delegation when it's visiting America;everyday every delegation insists on eating in China Town.If the group happened to find out they were going to eat Western food,there would be great protesting,making the people feel like they were being tortured.The delegation members really take pity on this girl who married a foreigner and lives abroad,as it only results in inhumane treatment of the stomach.They often point out the foreigner on the street eating a hamburger and ask my wife,“you normally eat that with the Americans,oh,how painful it must be!”

My wife's Chinese compatriots certainly didn't mistakenly take pity on her, when it comes to food and drink,the clash between east and west is most typical for my wife and I.Once,after tinkering around in the kitchen for more than two hours,I brought out a roast chicken,ecstatically ready to show off my skills.My wife took a bite,found it all together too bland and started sprinkling soy sauce and vinegar all over the plate.Upon seeing this,I,at once,impetuously grabbed her plate and dumped the entire contents into the garbage,then chastised her for not knowing how to respect my culinary art.

My Chinese mother-in-law has lived in America for almost 40 years and still to this day,every meal she eats is Chinese food.Occasionally she will try some foreign dishes and complain endlessly“there's no flavor at all.”For instance my mother-in-law while eating cream fish complained saying,“Oh no! Good food,poorly prepared.It has all been spoilt.How can this even compare to how good sweet and sour fish or fishbraised in soy sauce is.”When eating stake she frowned shoving the food in her mouth and saying,“Mrs.Zhang's orange beef is the best,I really should to call her up and invite myself over to enjoy another meal of her cooking.”All of this causing me,the son-in-law,who only wanted to butter up my mother-in-law a little,to spend money just to torment myself.

The biggest thing that makes people not know whether to laugh or cry about my mother-in-law is that when she's commenting on food from any countryit'salways from a Chinese culinary point of view and with Chinese culinary tastes in mind.Her, usual,well-informed opinion is“this dish is too bland,and that dish needs to be cooked longer.”O(jiān)r,“how come this duck's skin isn't crispy,and the blood was not cleaned off completely.”Causing us,watching on,too feel completely embarrassed.

As for the Chinese culinary neighbor, Thai food,this old lady has even more astute criticism:“what the hell is this, it'sactuallyjustChinesefoodgone wrong.”

In Hong Kong,the so-called western food that I have tried is all mostly just Hong Kongese western food.I,one time,took my Hong Kongese friends, especially,to an expensive Italian bakery but the Hong Kongese wouldn't believe the authentic Italian chefs cooking.They asked puzzlingly,“do you think it tastes good?”I replied,“Absolutely,this is real western food.”They just started to sigh,“Ah,this taste really is different, whatspicesarein here?It clearly has a Chinese medicine taste to it.It doesn't even taste like food.The improved Hong Kongese style of'western food' is still far more to our liking.”This is no different from the weird tasting food that you would find in a foreign Chinese restaurant in the west.The British Vice-Prime Minister ate Peking duck at the famous Quanjude in Beijing and complained that there was too much skin,saying that it wasn't as good as roast duck from the take-out restaurant right outside his front door back home.The Chinese made fun of him saying that he was just used to the taste of Western-Chinese food and couldn't tell the good from the bad.

Chinese Table Manners

For foreigners to enjoy Chinese food they must all go through a certain learning process first.Westerns on first coming in contact with Chinese food will, just because they are amateurs,make a big to-do.They will be astonished over the meat in Chinese food,calling over the waiter and interrogating them as to why they have been given somebody else's leftovers.

Since Westerners are accustomed to having big stakes on their plates when they see the“mincemeat”that they are given in Chinese dishes they just think that it is the tricky Chinese disguising yesterday's leftovers and plating them up again deliberately to cheat the foreigners.The first time I had the famous Taiwanese dish Sanbeiji(Three-Cup Chicken),I almost choked on the first bite, and I never imagined that there would be chicken bones inside the food.After that,I never ordered chicken again in a Chinese restaurant.Chicken in Chinese food,to me,is,purely,just stewed chickenbones;dinersareconstantly starting and stopping,spitting and swallowing.It’s too much like hard work, unlike Western food where you would just get a nice big piece of chicken breast.

When I had just started out learning Chinese our Chinese teacher told us an allusion about Wang Anshi who could upon tasting tea,tell whether the water to make the tea had come from the upper,middle or lower reaches of the river.I think the Chinese art of tea tasting, although different in method,is quite similar to Western wine tasting,sharing similar artistic results.After studying Classical Chinese,I realized that the model example of Chinese food culture could be seen from people sharing a hot pot dinner together.Bai Juyi wrote a poem,which says:

Green ants a newly brew,

Red clay miniature stove.

With dusk,the snow impending,

Care to have a cup,or no?

The poem is said to have originally been a written invitation to friends to come enjoy some hot pot together.

Foreigners think that Chinese food is not like Western food where portions are separated individually.In Chinese restaurants,people are often seen sat around head-to-head,chopstick to chopstick,in a big circle enjoying their food.It would seem that there is no etiquette of which to speak of and unlike in Western customs,Chinese do not need to be tiredly sat with their backs perfect straight andelbows clamped in.It wasn't until I made a fool of myself eating Chinese that I realized the subtle complexities of table etiquettes that truly do exist in China.

My wife couldn't stand my table manners right from the get go.At that time, I,the Chinese-food-blind man,always loved grabbing a pieces of meat with my chopsticks,picking them up and giving them a good look over;if I didn't like what I saw I would chuck the meat right back on to the dish.Then I would take myalreadysalivasoiledchopsticks, stick them in to the bowl,rummage around for some food and pull out a piece of tofu,deliberate as to whether I wanted it or not,then throw it back in the bowl.At that time being so carelessly indecisive,my future wife just sat there and suffered in silence.Being as OCD about cleanliness as she was,every time we would eat together,she would just nervously stare at my chopsticks flutteringby.Ifmychopstickshad passed through anywhere or if I had put any food back on to the dishes,she would carefully memorize where the places were in order to avoid touching them.Just like that,after a whole meal, she hardly ate anything.Her spirits seem to be fairly low.At the time,I just figured she was fasting.You know,to keep slim and what not.

Finally one day,she put her chopsticksdown,stoppedeating,solemn faced and berated me,“can you not play with your chopsticks and decide what you want before you go to grab it?You are acting like you don't have any manners at all and how do you expect other people to eat?It would be easier if we just drank the spit from out of your mouth instead.”I never thought that chopsticks could actually cause such an unforgivable sin.My chopsticks,flying, mid-air,stiffened and stopped where they were,and my face blushed burningly.

After that,I was extremely cautious and asked everyone about all the different types of Chinese table etiquette. There is still one classic phenomena, though,that really confuses Westerners; a big table of Chinese,who just a moment ago were vividly talking and laughingly merrily but after dinner they start getting up one by one and arguing with one another.Only after a Chinese person pointed out what was going on did I realize,each diner is vying to be the first to pay the bill.

(FromForeigners OnChina,Writers PublishingHouse.Translation:Sam Bowden.Illustration:CFP)