The reasons that I’m writing about food and the nation is because I love to eat, but also because, as a proud Chinese (not yet over nationalistic I hope), I find myself frequently irritated by people from in various corners of the world generalizing the subject of and misguidedly trying to make Chinese food. This often due to the restaurants operated abroad by the Chinese diaspora, where food is cooked poorly by Chinese standards but is proudly labeled as “authentic Chinese”. This leads to great misinterpretation among non-Chinese.
It is well known that most of the Chinese overseas immigrants are from Southern China and Hong Kong, and a large number of them speak Cantonese rather than Mandarin. Chinese people look more or less the same in the eyes of Westerners, so perhaps there is a difficulty in differentiating the food as well. Many might believe that it does not matter where the cook is from, as long as the food tastes good. As a proud Beijinger who thinks her hometown represents the real taste of China, at least for some of the more important dishes, I can’t really let these issues slide. My frustration boils over whenever I am hungry for Chinese food in London, as most of the so-called Chinese restaurants available are really quite alien to me.
Two events inspired me to create this series:
The first occurred n the winter of 2008, when I happened to be in Mohe, a small town at the north tip of China with a latitude of 53° and an average temperature of -5°C in the whole year. The main highlights of Mohe in winter are sleigh rides and walking across a frozen river into Russia. People there take the income from tourists for granted and serve them poor quality over-priced food because there is nowhere else to find food when it is -25°C in the afternoon, as it was for us. In our spontaneous group, there were two people from Shan Xi, a province in China whose specialty is noodles. So one day at lunch, we were served noodle dishes for 5 Kuai per person, about 50p, which was still a rip-off by Chinese standards. We chose noodle because it was the cheapest. The noodles were tasteless, and I really didn’t feeling like eating much. But the girl from Shan Xi whispered to me, “Eat more, noodles like this won’t keep you going too long in freezing weather like this.” With thoughts of dying of starvation in the freezing cold, I ordered another 2 more big bowls. Meanwhile the guy from Shan Xi became irritated, saying: “This is an insult to noodles. No one can cook noodles like that!” He threw his chopsticks on the table and started to stare at me, wondering how could I eat so many noodles. I just replied: “In this weather, when I’m hungry, I have no more standards.”
The second event happened more recently in London, and my colleagues from our International Journalism course and I gathered together for lunch in the university cafeteria. I ordered some random pasta Bolognese and brought it back to our table. Nothing special. One of our Italian friends stared at the noodles and looked indignant. He squeezed a piece of pasta and said: “What is this? What is this?” I thought he was kidding. “This is pasta”, I replied. “This is over-cooked! They have no idea how to cook pasta!”
Food is important for many people around the world, and I feel it’s high time someone wrote some truth about real Chinese food.
By Zhao Xue
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