Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food, Fuchsia Dunlop (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023). One sunny December morning years ago, Jane and I were on holiday in the South of China. Far from the city, a little temple had been hewn out of a seaside grotto so that it partially flooded when the tide came in. We stood inside and gazed up at a statue of 觀音, “Guan Yin,” the lady to whom the temple was dedicated. Her legend originated in India, where she was known as the bodhisattva Avalokitasvara, but she’d been absorbed and appropriated by Chinese folk religion many centuries ago, and in this statue there was no trace to be found of her South Asian origins. A minute or two into our reverie, a local came over to us and, seeing that we looked out of place, helpfully explained in unaccented English, “This is one of the most important Christian goddesses.”
Lu Xun, the great modernist writer, has a story where the protagonist stays up late reading the Chinese classics and begins to hallucinate that every line reads "EAT PEOPLE!"
Would love to have a complete theory of why some societies consider it totally acceptable to torture animals for fun and other societies consider it repulsive. There are obvious Western examples like bear-baiting and dog fighting, also the entire factory farming system, it's presumably not just a weird Chinese thing. I guess we boil lobsters alive as well.
Would add one thing re your comments about fish. Any Mediterranean seafood chef (read: good seafood chef) would never cut off the head or tail of a fish before cooking/grilling. I'm a Croatian so I still remember how my great grandma sucked out everything from the fish head + the eyes, I found it revolting at the time but now I realise how good it is.
Ofc when I moved over to England and cooked an entire fish, head and all, for the first time in my uni accommodation it caused a bit of a scandal......
EDIT: And furthermore to add to usual pieces of meat, one good culinary trip to the balkans will show you there's plenty of places where every part of the animal (tripe, brains, glands......) is still much appreciated
Regarding the extravagant slow murder or torture of animals:
> Consider the artist Xu Zhen, today one of Chinese art’s biggest international stars, the head of an entire art collective-cum-corporation called MadeIn. In 1998, he purchased a cat, strangled it, then beat its lifeless body to a mangled pulp as a performance. “In order to release my frustration without violence towards the public, the cat was a substitute,” he explained.
> Sun and Peng’s early works mark the same extremes. Infamously, Peng’s installation Curtain (1999) saw her go to a Chinese wholesale fresh animal market, purchasing an immense quantity of lobsters, eels, snakes, and frogs. Her 10 assistants speared them alive on metal wires to create a dense, writhing, four-by-six tapestry that thrashed out its death throes over the course of the installation.
Thanks. That was a laugh. Growing up, my buddy's mom was from Taiwan and we always ate interesting foods at his house. This brought back many memories: my first tripe soup, eating a salad with mini fish in it (don't ask how they cleaned them!), and watching her eat the fish eyes with her chopsticks.
Then it's off to the Asian grocery store to see the wild colors everywhere. I only wish I knew how to cook some of those things. I'd try one of (most) everything.
Lu Xun, the great modernist writer, has a story where the protagonist stays up late reading the Chinese classics and begins to hallucinate that every line reads "EAT PEOPLE!"
Would love to have a complete theory of why some societies consider it totally acceptable to torture animals for fun and other societies consider it repulsive. There are obvious Western examples like bear-baiting and dog fighting, also the entire factory farming system, it's presumably not just a weird Chinese thing. I guess we boil lobsters alive as well.
Would add one thing re your comments about fish. Any Mediterranean seafood chef (read: good seafood chef) would never cut off the head or tail of a fish before cooking/grilling. I'm a Croatian so I still remember how my great grandma sucked out everything from the fish head + the eyes, I found it revolting at the time but now I realise how good it is.
Ofc when I moved over to England and cooked an entire fish, head and all, for the first time in my uni accommodation it caused a bit of a scandal......
EDIT: And furthermore to add to usual pieces of meat, one good culinary trip to the balkans will show you there's plenty of places where every part of the animal (tripe, brains, glands......) is still much appreciated
Regarding the extravagant slow murder or torture of animals:
> Consider the artist Xu Zhen, today one of Chinese art’s biggest international stars, the head of an entire art collective-cum-corporation called MadeIn. In 1998, he purchased a cat, strangled it, then beat its lifeless body to a mangled pulp as a performance. “In order to release my frustration without violence towards the public, the cat was a substitute,” he explained.
> Sun and Peng’s early works mark the same extremes. Infamously, Peng’s installation Curtain (1999) saw her go to a Chinese wholesale fresh animal market, purchasing an immense quantity of lobsters, eels, snakes, and frogs. Her 10 assistants speared them alive on metal wires to create a dense, writhing, four-by-six tapestry that thrashed out its death throes over the course of the installation.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/so-whats-really-going-on-with-that-disturbing-dog-video-at-the-guggenheim-1100417
I look forward to your reviews every week; they are quite akin to your description of Chinese cuisine in their delicious eclecticism!
Obligatory link to Stone Age Herbalists post on Chinese cannibalism: https://www.stoneageherbalist.com/p/cannibalism-with-chinese-characteristics
Thanks. That was a laugh. Growing up, my buddy's mom was from Taiwan and we always ate interesting foods at his house. This brought back many memories: my first tripe soup, eating a salad with mini fish in it (don't ask how they cleaned them!), and watching her eat the fish eyes with her chopsticks.
Then it's off to the Asian grocery store to see the wild colors everywhere. I only wish I knew how to cook some of those things. I'd try one of (most) everything.
Utterly fascinating. Wonderful review.