In China, food is a national obsession and eating is the highlight of the day. You may be thinking, "I really like to eat, too," but believe me, the average American perspective on food bears no resemblance to that of an ordinary Chinese person. For one thing, it's not just an elite group of food snobs or the top twenty chefs who are passionate about food. Even among peasants, the standard greeting isn't "Nihao" (Hello), but rather "Chi guo le ma?" (Have you eaten?)
When I tested the speaking skills of my 87 graduate students, I interviewed each one about his or her hometown; the majority of these places were struggling villages or less than booming towns, or at best, the capitals of poor and remote provinces. Yet more often than not, students proudly informed me that their hometowns were famous for China's sweetest melons, most delicious hams, hottest chile peppers, or most tender rice. It seems every county in China is reknown for one food product or another.
Once my friend, ZXY, swallowing her first morsel of fish from a tureen full of soup, announced, "This fish is from my hometown!" I expressed polite skepticism that fish origins could be pinpointed by taste alone. ZXY replied, "But Deborah, I know how fish in my hometown taste! Don't tell me you couldn't recognize the flavor of fish from water near Boston!" I was too embarrassed to admit that in fact, I would be completely unable to distinguish a Boston harbor cod from its Nova Scotia cousin.
It seemed especially unlikely to me that this fish with the hometown flavor had been trucked to Kunming from a village more than 20 hours away, because until we ordered it for dinner, it had been spunkily swimming around. Freshness is essential in Chinese cuisine, and only the most ignorant foreigner would fail to inspect the vigor of a fish before having it cooked.
In fact, all food selection requires careful inspection. For my neighbors, cruising the local market is not a social exercise the way it often is for me. They need to see which farmers have unexpectedly shown up with barely budding chive blossoms, uncommonly seen wild mushrooms, or unusually tiny squash. No less attention is given to choosing a head of cabbage than in selecting a child's school. I have been scolded by friends for buying insufficiently slender scallions or spinach with unnecessarily large leaves. My selection of tangerines has been interrupted by a student who informed me that because her hometown was famous for its orchards, she was better equipped than I was to pick out fruit with the best flavor.
I have yet to meet a Chinese person who knows the first thing about grape wine (as it is called to distinguish it from the more traditional rice wine), but when they do get around to wine connoisseurship, they are going to be champs because understanding subtle nuances of flavor is an expertise developed in childhood. Not infrequently, our dinner companions will interrupt their elaborate discussions of the food to say, "I'm sorry, all this talk about food must seem very silly to you." But it doesn't at all; I feel I'm learning. The four primary flavors--sweet, sour, salty, and bitter--should all be represented in a meal, and sometimes even the order and combination matters. In one restaurant, while we savored delicate lily bulbs with celery, our friend Swallow mused, "This is rather sweet, don't you think?" We enthusiastically agreed, but she looked disturbed. "Then I don't understand why they brought this dish first. It doesn't make sense to start with a sweet dish." I didn't try to defend the cook because I know how much importance Swallow attaches to flavor.
Once I asked her how she, an exceptionally brilliant student, had ended up at our very lackluster Southwest Forestry College. "Well," she said, "it was between Beijing Forestry College and this school. You know I am from Sichuan, so it would have been very difficult for me to endure Beijing food. Kunming's flavors are closer to my hometown's." It is impossible for me to imagine an American student, never mind a smart one, basing college applications on regional cuisine!
At least to us, tasty Chinese food can be found in the most unlikely places: airport snack shops, railroad dining cars, and middle-of-nowhere roadside rest stops. Even the food at our local middle school canteen is considered appealing enough for many college staff members to lunch there regularly. That's not just for reasons of convenience because our immediate neighborhood offers dozens of lunch spots. In fact, John has suggested that in Kunming, the restaurant seat to resident ratio is just about 1:1.
You could argue that Americans like to eat out too, and the ever-expanding waistlines of Americans certainly do testify to a nation that devours food. However, a great deal of what we happily consume would appall a Chinese person. Never mind TV dinners, even the thought of a frozen chicken or canned soup is simply vile. ZXY vows to come visit us in the next few years and already I, a normally very confident cook, find myself fretting, "Oh God, what will I be able to feed her?"
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