Read At Home with Chinese Cuisine Online
Authors: T P Hong
At Home with Chinese Cuisine (37 page)
If we are to say that human beings are social animals, and that we have evolved to prefer to live and eat together either for security, kinship, or pleasure, we are talking about humanity in general and the Chinese in particular. The Chinese enjoy gathering around the table for meals. Socially, it can be a way for a group of people to assure their collective identity. In the home setting, eating together sharing food and thoughts convey the sense of belonging and affection. “I will be home for dinner” is a promise that sounds so reassuring.
When it comes to the time for meals, everybody gathers around the table, sharing food from the dishes presented in the middle of the table. The round-the-table dining does not involve passing dishes around. Chopsticks enable us to stretch out to reach the food we wish to have and they allow the Chinese to dine Service a la Chinois. And we take it so much for granted this is how the food is being served.
But it has not always been so. The excavation of the Han tombs between the 1950s and 1970s reveals much about how people of means dined and feasted.
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Mural paintings and stone reliefs from the sites show dishes served in individual portions placed on the rectangle or round wooden consoles in front of individual diners. Diners were seated on mats laid out on the floor. It was not until the 10
th
century during the Northern Song Dynasty when household furniture such as dining tables, chairs, and stools became popular that gathering around the table for a meal became possible.
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But the imperial households and those in the upper hierarchy of the class system hung on to the practice of individual servings and individual seating much longer. For a formal banquet, the diners’ seniority and social status used to dictate their seating order and the number of plates and food that they were served. For them, sharing food from the same plates was unthinkable.
European Royalty and nobility had a different idea on how to express power and status during the mealtime. With all dishes presented on the table simultaneously, a sumptuous display of elaborately prepared exotic delicacies earned them awe and envy. This method of service was called Service a la Francaise. It dates back to the Middle Ages and remained a form of meal service up to the early 19
th
century. The diners’ pecking order and social status were reflected by the seating arrangement and the assortment of food placed in front of them. With all the diners sitting down, plates were to be passed around among people of similar status. The practice of passing the plate around remains with us in the West today.
In medieval Europe, the spoon was the dinnerware served at the table. Gentlemen’s daggers were used to cut and pick up meat. And fingers were the natural tools to transport food to the mouth. The fork was not used in France, for example, until the 16
th
century when Catherine de Medici brought it with her from Italy for the marriage to the future French King Henry II. And it was until the mid-17
th
century that dining with a fork had become the norm for the upper classes and nobility in England.
In the mid-19
th
century, Prince Kourakin of Russia in his position as the ambassador to Paris brought Service a la Russe to France. This type of service soon caught on in England and other European countries for formal dining. With it, the wait staff served the diners individual portions in sequence. The food could be presented at their best, freshly prepared just before serving. Coupled with the legacy of Service a la Francaise whereby formal dining involved a three-course meal, we have a template for the hospitality industry to adopt and modify.
Following the spread of SARS in 2003 and the rise of hepatitis C, there were debates in China on communal dining habits and their health implications. There are a growing number of up-market restaurants and formal banquets that provide Service a la Russe. And buffet is becoming very fashionable.
It was during a visit to the countryside that I observed a different way of having a meal together. It was a farming community. Upon my arrival, the wife was finishing cooking; the dishes were all arranged along the edge of the traditional stove to keep warm. Several large bowls about three or four times the size of a cereal bowl were stacked up by the side with a bunch of chopsticks nearby. The wife went out to the front door and shouted out the name of her children. From nowhere, they rushed into the kitchen, helped themselves to a bowl, filled the bowl with the rice and picked up chopsticks to help themselves with the food from the plates. They rushed out with this bowl filled with food, and joined their friends in the village courtyard, all holding a bowl of food, chatting and eating, standing or squatting. Adults followed, with their bowls of dinner. They chatted with their own family members and neighbours. This is a buffet style eating that might meet the government’s criteria in countering communal disease. And it is a way to feed the young food they do not like. They probably did not notice what they were eating. The laughing and the chatting were the main course. When the bowls were empty, everybody headed for home. Front doors were shut. The day was over.
As early as the Neolithic period, grain-based diet and hot food tradition had resulted in chopsticks becoming the choice of the main dining utensil over other tools such as spoons. Since the Shang Dynasty, chopsticks have been the main dining utensils for the Chinese. The round-the-table dining practices and the hot food tradition that have evolved around the usage of the chopsticks have further affirmed their position on the Chinese dining table.
China’s ancient civilization originated from the Yellow River regions with its millet agriculture dating back to the Neolithic period. Wheat was introduced to China during the same period of time from Central and West Asia. Coupled with indigenous sorghum and pod-bearing crops, they formed the multi-grained diet for people in the north.
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At that time, the main staple was a grain-based congee (Chinese-style porridge) cooked in water in a ceramic cooking utensil. Vegetables and meat were cooked in water in a soupy mixture. Flat pieces of wood or bone, in all probability the predecessor of spoons were used for scooping up food. And the long, thin, usually tapered pieces of wooden stick we now call chopsticks were used to pick out solid bits from the hot liquid.
In the warmer southern regions along the YangTze River basin, people relied on rice cultivation to ensure the supply of the main staple since ancient times. Carbonised grains found in various sites along the southern coasts dated back to the 3
rd
and 4
th
millennia BC.
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Bamboo chopsticks were used for eating in those areas as early as the Shang Dynasty (1600-1050 BC).
If the common written language had united the nation, the chopsticks had facilitated the integration of dietary habits from different parts of China and contributed to the development of Chinese culinary culture. Throughout the Chinese history, dynasties came and went. The migration of political centres from the north to the south and back up to the north brought along mass migration of people, commerce and resulted social integration in both directions. Naturally, the movement of food to meet the demands of the migrants’ dietary habits followed. The supply of rice went up north while barley and wheat were shipped southward. Over time, noodles, steamed breads, multiple-grain diet appeared alongside the rice as the alternative staples in the south. And the northerners embraced the rice dishes as their own evidenced by their success in cultivating varieties of rice that thrived in the colder northern climates today.
North-eastern China is now the major rice production area supplying high quality rice all over the country. The cooler climate allows only one harvest per year in contrast to two harvests per year in the south. This slower growth is said to impart more subtlety in the flavour of the grains, therefore fetching higher prices in the market.
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Consequently, it gives an incentive to farmers to allocate more land for growing rice and to invest in improving the productivity. The consumption of rice as the main staple is a natural consequence of what is conveniently available locally. Nowadays, it is quite artificial to talk about the division of preference between the north and the south in the consumption of rice, wheat, or multi-grain diet.
The hot food tradition is rooted in the Chinese psyche. “Have your food while it is still hot” is a constant reminder at the dining table. This hot food tradition can be traced back to the Palaeolithic Age that ended around ten thousand years ago when the Chinese ancestors domesticated fire. Fire allowed us to cook. It was the beginning of the human civilisation. Cooking made the food easier to digest so we could get more out of what we eat. And it impacted on our social behaviour. Gathering around the fire eating freshly cooked hot food no doubt has a bearing on the later round-the-table dining practices.
As cooking gives us the choice of having food served hot, the Chinese’ preference over hot food can now partly be explained by the consensus reached within the scientific community. Food serving temperature does have bearing on our perception of the intensity of the taste of the food. Most of our taste perception is enhanced as the temperature of the food increases. And the taste of the food lingers comparatively longer in our mouth when served warm.
Religion also played a part in contributing to the hot food tradition. The worship of natural forces and the hot food offering have been important ceremonial activities since ancient times. The steam (Qi) from the hot food and the burnt incense offered were thought to be what the spirits and gods consumed, hence the offering of hot food as a sign of respect.
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And if the hot food was good for the spirits and gods, it was good for us humans. My childhood memory of ancestral worships in the family typifies the long held hot food tradition. The offering comprised of hot dishes of chicken, duck, fish, and meat, with glasses of wine, bowls of hot steamed rice, accompanied by pairs of chopsticks to facilitate eating.
It is fairly universal that babies instinctively seize food with their bare hands in their first step toward independence. Chinese parents normally take it easy on the young ones by showing them how to use spoons first. Learning how to use chopsticks is a giant leap forward. It is usually a messy affair to start with. Once they get the gist of handling the two sticks, they will be invited to the dining table and eat with adults. The next phase of the learning process is to teach them how to refine the skill of manoeuvring the chopsticks properly and observe a list of do’s and don’ts.
For foreign visitors, the effort to observe the dining etiquette is always met with smiles of approval, and is much appreciated. For the Chinese, how the chopsticks are handled is often regarded as a reflection of one’s upbringing. The ignorance of the dos and don’ts in adults gives away much information about the person’s social background. I still remember a conversation with a Human Resources executive in Beijing who talked about the final hurdle she set for the final-run candidates in interviews for an executive job. She would take the candidates to the restaurant and observed how they tackled the food with chopsticks. She always ordered a dish of steamed fish on the bone. Being aware of the social norms and what is expected of a business leader, a Chinese who cannot use chopsticks properly reveals a lot about the person, she said.
So, how do we hold the chopsticks properly? Chopsticks are two long, thin, usually tapered pieces of stick. The modern-day chopsticks for dining are about 20-24 cm; the extra long ones of about 40 cm are used as cooking utensils in frying or grilling. The way we hold the chopsticks is to use our thumb, index and middle fingers. It involves the exercise of the shoulders, arms, wrists, and fingers. It is a skill acquired with practice. To start with, hold a chopstick the way you hold a pen two-thirds of the way from the tips. Rest the chopstick on the distal phalanx
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of the middle finger, the proximal phalanx of the index finger, and the distal phalanx of the thumb. Introduce the lower chopstick by holding it parallel to the upper stick, about 1.5 cm in distance, resting on the distal phalanx of the ring finger and the proximal phalanx of the thumb. The lower chopstick always stays still. It is by moving the upper chopstick and has its tip to meet the tip of the lower stick that enables you to pick up objects.
When we first learn to use chopsticks, we are reminded to hold the tips of the chopsticks level from each other throughout the meal so it is easier to pick up food. We were told not to cross the chopsticks while picking up food. We should not hold chopsticks and the spoon in one or separate hand at one time. And when picking up food that requires twisting of the wrist, we should turn the wrist clockwise. Turning the wrist the other way to show the back of our hand is considered impolite. Helping ourselves with the food nearest to us from the plate is a table manner we must observe and it is rude to search for food from the plates. For a temporary respite in the middle of a meal, lay the chopsticks parallel on the table close to our rice bowl, preferably on a chopstick rest. Placing chopsticks on the top of the rice bowl normally means we have finished eating. It is polite to remain seated while elders around the table are still eating. Last but not least, it is discourteous to use chopsticks to point at people during the conversation around the dining table or use the chopsticks to beat on a plate or bowl to catch attention.
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