You are the way you eat

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You Are the Way You Eat

Cultural characteristics reflected in dining experiences



By Peng Huang



Oscar Wilde, a man of exquisite tastes, once commented on his dining experience at a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco’s China Town while he was touring the great country of America. He wrote in his Impressions of America, “The people – strange, melancholy Orientals, whom many people would call common, and they are certainly very poor – have determined that they will have nothing about them that is not beautiful. In the Chinese restaurant, where these navvies meet to have supper in the evening, I found them drinking tea out of china cups as delicate as the petals of a roseleaf, whereas at the gaudy hotels I was supplied with a delft cup an inch and a half thick. When the Chinese bill was presented it was made out on rice paper, the account being done in Indian ink as fantastically as if an artist had been etching little birds on a fan.”

One can always find amusement in reading such comments, where misunderstandings and over-romanticizing often abound. Perhaps a detailed comparison between dining experiences in the West and the East could reveal some of their cultural characteristics. 

First, cutlery. Western style cutlery, from a Chinese point of view, is both a spectacle and a strange sight, as such an armed-to-the-teeth preparation seems a gross exaggeration on the dining task ahead. In a Chinese mind, all the cutting jobs should have been done in the kitchen, not at the dinner table. All that heavy metal on the table is really a remnant of a far less civilized past. 

Now look at the chopsticks. The simplicity of the instrument is striking. Most of them are made of two bamboo sticks, and one can hardly be any more austere than this. Austere but extremely efficient, the bamboo sticks, once properly controlled, can shovel a large amount of food into one’s mouth in an instant. And although the well-to-do may have them made out of ivory or silver, its economical spirit remains. However, a closer observation may reveal the insidious nature of the invention.

The chopsticks, in essence, are an extension of one’s fingers, so is the fork in Western dining settings, yet, while the fork can deliver food of adequate size into the diner’s mouth in a rather discreet way, the chopsticks, on the other hand, can never be mastered gracefully, no matter how masterful one might be. The image created by the movement of chopsticks is always the same: you are sticking your fingers into the food. To make things worse, any less cultured individual is susceptible to committing the most abhorrent sins of mishandling the chopsticks, and there are twelve of them exactly, ranging from pairing chopsticks of different lengths, which is seen as a deadly curse, to dropping them accidentally on the floor, an omen of some dreadful kind. The application of force onto the device is yet another tricky business, generating further embarrassment at the dinner table, as too great a force shall send your food flying, and too weak would see it slip through your fingers. A pair of chopsticks in the hands of a child can be deadly. Stories tell of a certain youngster being killed by chopsticks, as he runs around with chopsticks in his mouth, then an accidental fall drives the bamboo sticks into his skull. 

Despite their apparent shortcomings, the chopsticks have survived, unchanged through many centuries. They have even successfully resisted the onslaught of Western imports to this day. That fact says much about the Chinese culture: to be economical at any cost.

Next, food sharing. The Western food sharing arrangement on the dining table is the embodiment of individualism, where everyone is entitled to have a portion of any dish presented, though one may opt out of any specific variety. Interestingly, the Chinese government of the 1980s once promoted such arrangement among its subjects for the reason of hygiene. The promotion was a result of many overseas trips taken by the national leaders in the early years of opening up to the West, who obviously were impressed by the Western civility on the matter. The initiative, needless to say, failed miserably, leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, and no pun is intended, as the official well-intentioned idea carried a stinging criticism on the time honored and saliva exchanging national table manners, which cannot be tolerated by such great people.

What one might expect in a Chinese food sharing arrangement on the dinner table would be a large table capable of having at least eight people sitting around it, and a smaller concentric turning table in the middle, known in the West as ‘Lazy Susan’, carrying dishes to everyone. The Lazy Susan turns literally as a wheel of fortune, and it is up to every dining individual to control his own destiny. The agile and the determined will enjoy more, while the shy and the hesitant will be left out unfulfilled. So much for the ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’.

The food sharing arrangement results in an unexpected socio-economical-ecological consequence. Once food was allocated to an individual’s plate, as seen in Western arrangement, people have no reason to eat it quickly. They tend to their time over food, and with their companions. It takes them the whole night to finish their dinner, and the food consumption has been reduced to a decorative feature of the night. The restaurant is literally selling time and its atmosphere or ambience to its patrons. Such a slow turnover in a night would certainly bankrupt any Chinese restaurant owner. The Lazy Susan arrangement puts pressure on everyone to eat his food quickly to avoid disappointment. Diners in a Chinese restaurant are not presented in distinctive phases, but a series delivery of newly cooked dishes. The enjoyment is largely in the process of food intake.

Now, the taste. Western food varies in taste and flavor to a great extent. One can find food as puritanical or monasterian as fish and chips, peas and carrots, food acting as a great encouragement for a life long fasting, and one can also find food with a pagan or heathen tradition, where everything goes. Nevertheless, they all show in their taste and flavor an effort to create a certain degree of subtlety, a combination of many flavors extending to cover the spectrum of taste. Not so in Chinese cuisine, where the goal is to achieve extremity.

Taking Sichuan style cuisine for an example, an uninformed individual would have sufficient ground to suspect the whole exercise is a kind of practical joke. The cuisine is an ever-evolving process in seeking a way to exploit the most lethal and murderous effect of the chili pepper, pure and simple. To enhance the strength of the hot flavor, they added another ingredient called wild Sichuan pepper to form the famous combination named ‘ma-la’ in Mandarin, literally means ‘pins and needles and hot’. The pronunciation of ‘ma-la’ should give you enough clues on how strong the flavor is, as both sounds require one to open his mouth to a maximum size in order to release the heat.

An unsuspecting adventurer will accept the challenge with delight, and sure enough, he will soon find the sensation exhilarating, as the powerful flavor combination hits him as if a cool breeze was blowing through his hollowed skull. He will ask for more to sustain the excitement. However, the reality comes back the morning after. When he sits on a toilet, he starts to realize that being an atheist is not a good idea after all, for his desire for instant nirvana or personal salvation has never been so strong, as the pain, in you know where, is literally driving him to curse the day of his birth.

Let’s go to a north China province called Shanxi, where the extremity shifts to acidity. Every dish is cooked with a large dose of vinegar, though it may not exacerbate your osteoporosis, you do need to count your teeth on your way home.

When it comes to liquor, the Chinese preference also contrasts some common practices in the West. While intoxication by alcohol is a universal pastime, some practices of alcohol consumption in the West still put a great emphasis on the enjoyment of the taste of the liquor. Chinese liquor, most of which is spirit based, does not leave too much room for the appreciation of its taste. Only twenty years ago, people would regard any spirits with alcohol content less than 60% as counterfeits or inferior products. The purpose of Chinese liquor is a straightforward one: getting drunk as soon as possible.

The extremity in the pursuit of enjoyment is a sign of loss of innocence, not loss of sophistication. When a culture grows old, cynicism creeps in and its senses also grow dull, which demands an ever-stronger stimulant to generate any meaningful sensations. 

Finally, the public perception of dining experiences between the West and the East. The public perception can be a general impression, which may or may not be accurate. For instance, the Chinese restaurant is usually presented in movies as a noisy place, where a meaningful conversation requires one to possess a pair of lungs as powerful as an auctioneer in a cattle yard. Western restaurants often assume an image of fine culture, both in reality and in artistic presentations, where there are white tablecloths, bouquets of various blossoms, candlelight, soft live music, and the gentle clinking of glasses. Where conflicts may be staged in such settings, it is only to highlight or dramatize the conflict, and pub fighting as in Westerns is an exception. But in Chinese movies, especially in kung fu movies, the restaurant IS the place for conflict!

The hero and the villain sit face to face at a table, while the entire audiences are on the edge of their seats. After exchanging a few words, they start to get physical. The first stage is chopstick fighting, which is rapid and comical. Soon the fight escalates, involving larger objects such as plates and bowls. Finally, one of them decides to go all the way, and he draws the stool from underneath his bottom, then the full scale of combat starts with objects of various kinds flying to and fro, blows delivered right and left, and men jumping up and down. Suddenly, one of them comes out second best, being sent into the air some two meters above ground by a bone-cracking strike, flying over a considerable distance with the help of an invisible steel wire, and lands on top of a dining table with such a great force that the furniture explodes into pieces, which is the spectacle the audience is waiting for. The intensity of the spectacle would increase ten fold if the restaurant has an upper level with a staircase leading to it. The only satisfying result of the fight should be the complete demolition of the upper level, with many people falling from a great height, crushing more dining tables as they land, and the hero will be the last man, and the last object for that matter, standing. The restaurant finally has served its purpose.

The attitude towards Chinese restaurants presented by kung fu movies may not have any cultural significance, but one can sense a relaxed treatment by the Chinese when it comes to dealing with their own culture, which is a result of the increasing contact with other cultures. New knowledge and new experience of the variety of other cultures give rise to new attitude and new perspectives to review one’s own culture. The new generation in China, especially the ones who are fortunate enough to experience Western culture first hand, hold far less nationalistic view of their own culture, and are more tolerant to criticism, or are even self-critical, which, in itself, is remarkable.


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