Chopsticks and Manners

I look back at the meals I’ve had at Chinese restaurants and how classy they pretended to be, or actually were. People dressed in jeans, khakis, suits even, fumbling with chopsticks as they sat in a western fashion around the table. The waiters would bring plates of food and it’d be family style serving to their individual plates. There was just an air about it, as of someone swaggering, except sitting. I look back at it and laugh, especially at the chopsticks and the baffled expression of an erudite trying to figure out the polite way to use them. There is none. I see them as an extension of my fingers to place each piece of food in my mouth and then use them like a shovel to get the last bits of food out of the bottom of the bowl. I came to China, raised on manners, but being too lazy to use them on an everyday basis, and tried to show how polite I was to my host family by using these ideas instilled in me as a kid. They wondered what was wrong with their food. Why wasn’t I enjoying it? They didn’t believe me when I said it was delicious, (it was really just hao chi at best.) Why though? Why didn’t they believe me? Because I hadn’t tried eating it like I was hungry, I hadn’t slurped the noodles, I hadn’t burped at the end of the meal. Apparently Emily Post doesn’t quite fit in with Chinese customs. Ba had lifted his bowl to his mouth and pushed the food towards him with the chopsticks, Peter was slurping noodles noisily from the bowl to his mouth and Ma was picking small fish bones out of her mouth and putting them on a napkin on the table. I was absolutely horrified by this my first day, but somewhere deep down, I loved it. I never really understood why you had to eat like you weren’t hungry if you were starving. In China, if you’re hungry, go to town on that meal. Of course this is just from my experiences in the normal middle class dinner setting, but still I felt instantly connected to this way of eating and fell even more in love with China.

I don’t know what really made me think about this… maybe my parents being on their way to China?