Chinese Food Habits

“The way you cut your meat reflects the way you live.”(Confucius)

 Travelling to China exposed us to the local populace, culture and the flavours …. Yes, flavours which brings me to Chinese food habits.

   We covered Yunnan, Shaanxi, Tianjin provinces, Shanghai and Beijing by train, uncovering the basics of Chinese food and the Yin and Yang of it all,

Every province has its own flavours and ingredients,  rice / noodles and the chopsticks being constant!  China produces 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year!! Their food is dominated by 5 key flavours…sweet, salty, sour, bitter and spicy. For e.g. Sichuan province opt for spicy whereas the south prefer sour and soupy.

Being adventurous on unknown cuisine and our insatiable curiosity took us to the wet market in Beijing followed by dinner at Wangfujing Food Street at a restaurant, its name when translated read “Wicked Wok”leaving us gleefully guessing why it was so called.

Google translator helped to make sense of the Mandarin menu card, the monikers having nothing to do with the actual dish. For e.g. “Ants climb trees “is vermicelli with spicy minced pork. A “field chicken” is a frog. They were like clues to a crossword puzzle. Our foodie experience made us accept the fact that the “Chinese eat everything”. But why do they?

Despite being a great civilization of the ancient world, China has had its share of famines, diseases and hardships like no other nation. The vastness of the country, its huge population, historical factors (Great Leap, Long March, etc) have compounded the problem. This has made them reach out and eat whatever is available to supplement their protein, vitamin and other dietary in-take. Flexibility and adaptability has seen them through hard times.

 Even today, the present generation has ample knowledge of wild edible plants.

”Famine plants”, as they are called, has been handed down through generations as a part of their survival culture.

 If you think their choice of wild-life is strange, their insane display of vegetables is often off-beat and weird. A yard long yam, bitter melon, untranslatable weeds, and tree fungi looking suspiciously poisonous,  are bought with zest and devoured with gusto.
 Preservation of food for a rainy day has led to smoking, salting, sugaring, pickling, drying etc of goodies which often turn out to be delectable and irresistible.

Myths and superstitions have determined food habits. The belief that the body part of the animal that you eat enhances that same part of the human body explains devouring of the brain and the genitals. Deer antlers, caterpillar fungus, maidenhair tree (Ginkgo Bilbao) are aphrodisiacs. Another popular vegetable is the geoduck which resembles the phallus.

 Meat near the bones is supposed to be the best. Therefore bones are chopped and crushed to release the marrow when cooked. The rhino horn supposedly has medicinal value and drive .It’s considered an esteemed gift. 

Virility is an important issue with many men. A middle-aged individual explained that impotency is a genuine problem and there were many reasons for this some of which were unique to China. Trauma from famine, political violence, seedy business culture etc  explained the consumption of unusual plants and animals. (Read E.Y.Zhang’s “The Impotence Epidemic: Men’s medicine and Sexual desire in Contemporary China.”)Today, sex is no longer a negative word and lust is everywhere; so has the demand for stimulating foods and love-potions.

 Wastage of food was a taboo in Buddhism and Shintoism. Scarcity and poverty often validated this. Thus every part of the animal is eaten .The claws of the chicken are chewed with relish and the soft nose of the pig is eaten with glee often downed with a pint of “Baijui”or Chinese beer. Shark’s fin soup is a delicacy and is served at lavish dinners. Along with the Pangolin they are expensive items and only the rich can afford. The rural poor make do with dormouse and frogs.

Food and health are governed by the Yin and Yang principles. Eating more of one kind may harm the body: a balance is essential. Yin charts include soya, duck etc and yang covers fat, eggs. Desserts are absent in a typical Chinese meal. If at all, it’s served at the beginning. After an exotic meal, stomach ache and diahorrea are common often jokingly referred to as” Mao’s curse.” Hot water or tea is the rule during meal

Contrary to our belief, there is a large segment of Buddhists who are vegetarians serving dishes which are equally delicious.  Earlier, most Chinese were petite with narrow waists. The reason being food was always shared, small plates were used where you tend to eat less, there were no refillable drinks and no desserts. Things have changed in modern China. While incomes have grown so have the waistline and stature.

While we would smack our lips after a meal of chicken curry and rice, many Chinese mix their meats. It is believed the Zero patient of SARS in Guangdong province in 2003 had a hotpot of chicken, frog and bat. How authentic this is we are not sure. And there’s nothing wrong in it per se.  Everybody has a right to their taste-buds except that this incident broke loose an epidemic which obliterated a part of the world’s population.

In the markets, wild animals are not segregated. You will find bats lying along with baby crocodiles or even on top of one another. Therein lay the problem. As we have seen the Novel C-virus was transmitted from a bat to a pangolin to the human body. Stricter rules and better hygiene should help.

All said and done, no other civilization has shown greater inventiveness in food than China. The popularity of Chinese cuisine is unquestionable as is evident by the “Golden Dragons”, “China Towns,””Ming “restaurants dotting the length and breadth of Mother Earth.

There’s no one way to live life…. life must be lived on your own terms. Eat what you want to eat without harming others!

 Let me end with the following quote….

 “Anything that walks, swims, crawls or flies with its back to heaven is edible.”(A Cantonese saying)