A Culinary Rant

 

I got dragged along to another useless 3-hour business lunch today with 10 attendees to resolve something which in a sane part of the world takes 2 people 15 minutes by e-mail. I spent my time sipping tea, peeling shrimp, looking bewildered as the conversation was 99% in Wenzhounese (but I know they were talking about me due to the pointing and laughing in my direction). My party ended up eating maybe 40% of the food put out for us. In between trying to kill myself, I came up with some new rant topics.

NB: I'm not that angry this week.

1. Chopsticks

I truly, honestly, and completely don't get chopsticks. No, really. I don't understand them at all and how they came about. If a brilliant scientist said "I'm going to invent a way of eating that is far more difficult and counterintuitive than anything you can imagine", he/she would probably come up with something very similar to chopsticks.

There are, as far as I can tell, a few arguments in favour of chopsticks. Let's go over them, one by one.

Artistic. Basically, the argument goes that eating with chopsticks is an element of Chinese traditional culture and that it is artistic both in the way food is presented and consumed. You are supposed to be impressed at the beauty and finesse that eating with chopsticks entails.

Response: Well, guess what. Up until about 75 years ago, it was considered "beautiful" for a woman to bind her feet in childhood so she could teeter around like some sort of retarded turtle on stilts. Seriously, the sight of a woman mincing in three-inch-long cloven hooves would send the male population of the ENTIRE surrounding prefecture into RAGING hard-ons. I mean there was a time when slavery and geocentrism were considered normal, but come on! NEXT!

Convenience. Well, eating with chopsticks allows you to pick up and eat entire portions of food without cutting them up and ruining their presentation.

Response. Oh my freakin' God, this is EATING we are talking about here. Do you realize WHAT HAPPENS to food after it leaves your chopsticks and you masticate it with your mandibles, only for it to be sent down your gullet to be broken down by stomach acids and eventually broken down into solid waste which, if you are toddler, it is perfectly acceptable to dump on the sidewalk through your open-crotch pants?!?!

If you don't know, try this: 1) eat as much as you can, 2) drink an entire bottle of Mao-tai, 3) wait 5 minutes. THERE. That's what happens to food. Fυck presentation. Worrying about the presentation of food in the act of eating it is like worrying about whether the Brooklyn Dodgers have a chance in this year's playoffs. NEXT!

Habit. Chinese people are used to eating with chopsticks.

Response. That's fine, but it's still the most GODDAMN ILLOGICAL way of eating I can think of. What's a staple of Chinese diet? Rice! HOW DO YOU EAT RICE WITH CHOPSTICKS?!?! If it was pasta or large chunks of vegetables, I'd understand. But rice?! RICE?! Chopsticks?! What about soup? If an important element of Chinese cuisine is soup, then what the fυck? How do you eat rice and soup with chopsticks?

Look, think of a spoon. Imagine a really large spoon, like as long as you are tall. What's that? A shovel. That's right. A spoon is a FOOD-SHOVEL. It is used to SHOVEL food in your mouth. Now I may be an uncivilized barbarian foreign devil capitalist roader imperialist running dog scum, but when I am hungry, I want to SHOVEL food down my mouth. Ever try to dig a hole or shovel coal with a pair of stilts? Same (lack of) logic.

2. Labour-intensive eating

Disclaimer: I am a fat, grotesquely out of shape, and unspeakably lazy. Ever watch Journey to the West? I identify with Zhu Bajie [Nothing to be ashamed off. Ed].

But what the hell is the deal with eating fish, prawns, seafood etc. in Chinese cuisine? Why do I have to individually peel every single piece of prawn before I eat it? Can't they come pre-peeled? I don't know how to peel those damn things and I don't want prawn juice all over my clothes!

And then there's the bones. I mean, when I eat a T-bone steak, I expect there to be a well, giant T-bone in it, but when it comes to fish in a Chinese restaurant, WTF!? Fish bones are all sharp and pointy and thin!!! Eating lunch should NOT be a life-threatening experience.

Basically, if I want to kill, gut, prepare, and cook my own food, I won't go to a restaurant! If I want to suck the juices out of a dead crab, I'll do that when I'm in Maine wearing a giant bib, not at a business dinner wearing a suit!

Finally, I'm a clean-plate person. After a good meal, I expect to look down and see a reasonably clean plate. I do NOT want to see a stack of shrimp peelings, bones, and other crap that, like Hillary Clinton, should have stayed in the kitchen!!!!

3. Hot tea

This I really don't get. Today's a reasonably hot today. We had BOILING HOT TEA with lunch. Why do the Chinese drink BOILING HOT TEA?! When I got here in August, I saw people sitting outside in 100+ degree weather, in shorts and t-shirts (and sometimes not even that), with GIANT THERMOSES OF HOT TEA!!

Where is the logic of drinking BOILING HOT TEA on a HOT DAY? I mean, when you have a fever, do you use BOILING WATER to wipe your forehead?

Ah, but there's this traditional Chinese medicine explanation that hot water qing huo (literally "reduces fire") in you and that's somehow good for you. Last I checked, no part of my body was burning, but whatever, I'll indulge you. Let's do an experiment:

1. Build two fires.
2. Dump a gallon of boiling hot water on one fire.
3. Dump a gallon of ice cold water on the other fire.

I'll bet you a slice of pizza that both will put the fire out equally well.

Anyway, during the Olympics, I saw poor President Hu Jintao (he's getting kind of fat lately) stagger into the Bird's Nest in Beijing, wearing a thick suit and tie, clearly sweating and uncomfortable. And right in front of his seat was... you guessed it... a giant steaming pot of tea.

[Editor's Note: Our non American readers should note that “tea” is apparently more often taken cold in the USA.]

4. Waste

*sigh*

We ate about 40% of the food put out for us.

In China, if guests finish up all the food that the host puts out, then the host has lost face, for it means that his guests are still hungry and he hasn't given them enough food.

In the West, if guests finish up all the food that the host puts out, that's good. If there's any left over, the guests are encouraged to take it home.

"Clean your plate", and "don't bite off more than you can chew", we are taught, from a very young age.

Here? 24 dishes for 10 people. Never mind that nobody could possibly finish more than one dish. Doggy-bagging is unheard of. And all that food, which can feed another 14 people, goes into the trash. And that was just one party at lunch. The total amount of food wasted in this country on a weekly basis must be mind-blowing. And of course, every meeting calls for a banquet. Doing business over coffee or a sandwich is unheard of. Even a courtesy visit to meet and greet requires a banquet. And only 3 types of people exercise: 1) young Yao Ming worshippers, 2) old men who climb hills, 3) old ladies who dance en masse in public squares at night. No wonder Chinese leaders are fat.

And this is a country that just less than 20 years ago, phased out mandatory food rationing. And still has the majority of its population on subsistence farming! Subsistence farming! Food rationing! My grandmother needed ration coupons to go shopping!

Where is the logic in that?! How do you build a new socialist countryside / run a country / not want to kill yourself every night when the rural population is living hand-to-mouth and the urban population wastes well more than half its food???

Un-fυcking-believable!