nourishing and excitative medicines, or like a good general in the field, using both
normal and surprise tactics. Again it is like a master painter at his work, not allowing
a single dead stroke, or like a great writer writing essays, not permitting a single
unharmonious sentence. ?. .
Harmony, irregularity, surprise, concealment and suggestion 梩 hese are some of the
principles of Chinese garden-planting, as they are of other forms of Chinese art.
III. EATING AND DRINKING
The question has often been asked as to what we eat. The answer is that we eat all the
edible things on this earth. We eat crabs by preference, and often eat barks by
necessity, Economic necessity is the mother of our inventions in food. We are too
over-populated and famine is too common for us not to eat everything we can lay our
hands on. And it stands to reason that in this positively exhaustive experiment on
edibles, we should have stumbled upon important discoveries, as most scientific or
medical discoveries have been stumbled upon. For one thing, we have discovered the
magic tonic and building qualities of ginseng, for which I am willing to give personal
testimony as to its being the most enduring and most energygiving tonic known to
mankind, distinguished by the slowness and gentleness of its action. But apart from
such accidental discoveries of medical or culinary importance, we are undoubtedly the
only truly omnivorous animals on earth, and so long as our teeth last, we should
continue to occupy that position. Some day a dentist will yet discover that we have the
best teeth as a nation. Gifted with these teeth and driven by famine, there is no reason
why we should not at some particular time of our national life suddenly discover that
roasted beetles a&d fiied bees' chrysalis are great delicacies. The only thing we have
not discovered and will not eat is cheese. The Mongols could not persuade us to eat
cheese, and the Europeans do not have a greater chance of doing so.
It is useless to use logical reasoning in the matter of our food, which is determined by
prejudices. On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean two shellfish are common, the
soft-shelled clam, Mja ar€naria9 and the edible mussel, Mjtilus edulis. The species of
these two molluscs are the same on both sides of the water. In Europe, mussels are
eaten freely, but not clams, while the reverse is the case on the American side,
according to the authority of Dr. Charles W. Townsend (Scientific Monthly>, July,
1928). Dr. Townsend also mentions the fact that flounders fetch high prices in
England and in Boston but are considered "not fit to eat" by Newfoundland villagers.
We eat mussels with the Europeans and eat clams with the Americans, but we don't
eat oysters raw as the Americans do. It is useless, for instance, for anybody to
convince me that snake's meat tastes like chicken. I have lived in China forty years
without eating a snake, or seeing any of my relatives do so. Tales of eating snakes
travel faster than tales of eating chicken, but actually we eat more chickens and better chickens than the white people, and snake-eating is as much a curiosity to the Chinese
as it is to the foreigners.
All one can say is that we are very catholic in our tastes, and that any rational man can
take anything off a Chinese table without any qualm of conscience. What famine
dictates is not for us human mortals to choose. There is nothing that a man will not eat
when hard pressed by hunger. And no one is entitled to condemn until he knows what
famine means. Some of us have been forced in times of famine to eat babies 梐 nd
even this must be humanly rare 梑 ut, thank God, we do not eat them raw as the
English eat their beef!
If there is anything we are serious about, it is neither religion nor learning, but food.
We openly acclaim eating as one of the few joys of this human life. This question of
attitude is very important, for unless we are honest about it we will never be able to
lift eating and cooking into an art* The difference of attitude regarding the problem of
food is represented in Europe by the French and the English. The French eat
enthusiastically, while the English eat apologetically* The Chinese national genius
decidedly leans toward the French in the matter of feeding ourselves.
The danger of not taking food seriously and allowing it to degenerate into a slipshod
business may be studied in the English national life. If they had known any taste for
food their language would reveal it. The English language does not provide a word for
cuisine: they call it just "cooking." They have no proper word for chef; they just call
him a cook. They do not speak about their menu, but know only what are called
"dishes." And they have no word for gourmet: they just call him "Greedy Gut" in their
nursery rhymes. The truth is, the English do not admit that they have a stomach. No
stomach is fit for conversation unless it happens to be "sick9* or "aching." The result
is that while the Frenchman will talk about the cuisine of his chef with梬 hat seems to
the English mind 梚 mmodest gestures, the Englishman can hardly venture to talk
about the "food" of his "cook" without impairing the beauty of his language. When
hard pressed by his French host he might be willing to mutter between his teeth that
"that pudding is awfully good" and there let the matter rest. Now if a pudding is good
it is good for some definite reasons, and about these problems the Englishman does
not bother himself. All the English are interested in is how to strengthen themselves
against influenza, as with Bovril, and save the doctor's bills.
Now you cannot develop a national culinary art unless you are willing to discuss it
and exchange your opinions on it The first condition of learning how to eat is to talk
about it Only in a society wherein people of culture and refinement inquire after the ir
cooks9 health, instead of talking about the weather, can the art of cuisine be
developed. No food is really enjoyed unless it is keenly anticipated, discussed, eaten
and then commented upon* Preachers should not be afraid to condemn a bad steak
from their pulpits and scholars should write essays on the culinary art as the Chinese
scholars do. Long before we have any special food, we think about it, rotate it in our minds, anticipate it as a secret pleasure to be shared with some of our dosest friends,
and write notes about it in our invitation letters, like the following: "My nephew has
just brought some special vinegar from Ghinkiang and a real Nanking salted duck
from Laoyuchai," or this, "This is the end of June, and if you don' t come, you won't
taste another shad till next May." Long before the autumn moon rises, a real scholar,
like Li Liweng as he himself confesses, would plan and save money for the crabs,
decide upon an historical place where he could have the crab dinner with his friends
under the mid-autumn moon or in a wilderness of chrysanthemums, negotiate with
some of his friends to bring wine from Governor Tuan Fang's cellar, and meditate
upon it as the English meditate upon their champion sweepstakes number. Only in this
spirit can the matter of feeding ourselves be elevated into the level of an art.
We are unashamed of our eating. We have "Su Tungp'o pork" and "Kiang
bean-curd.** In England, a Wordsworth steak or Galsworthy cutlet would be
unimaginable. Wordsworth sang about "simple living and high thinking," but he failed
to note that good food, especially fresh-cut bambooshoots and mushrooms, counts
among the real joys of a simple rural life. The Chinese poets, with a more utilitarian
philosophy, have frankly sung about the "minced perch and shunvegetable soup" of
their native home. This thought is regarded as so poetic that officials in their petition
for resignation will say that they are "thinking of $Attn-vegetable" as a most elegant
expression* Actually our love of fatherland is largely a matter of recollection of the
keen sensual pleasures of our childhood* The loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to
American doughnuts, and the loyalty to the Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfamkuffhen
and StoUmy but the Americans and the Germans will not admit it. Many Americans,
while abroad, sigh for their ham and sweet potatoes at home, but they will not admit
that this makes them think of home, nor will they put it in their poetry.1
The seriousness with which we regard eating can be shown in many ways. Anyone
who opens the pages of the Red Chamber Dream or of any Chinese novel will be
struck by the detailed and constant descriptions of the entire menu of what Taiyii
* A striking fact is the frequency of words like "intestines*' and "belly" in Chinese
poetry: e.?, "Tfce bamboo-shoots are fresh and my rice-bowl is too small; the fish is
delicious, and my wine-intestines widen/' had for breakfast or what Paoyii had at
midnight. Cheng Panch' iao apotheosized rice congee in his letter to his brother:
On cold days, when poor relatives or friends arrive, first hand them a bowl of fried
rice in boiling water, with a small dish of ginger or pickles. It is the most effective
means of warming up old people and the poor. In your days of leisure, swallow cakes
made of broken rice, or cook "slipslop congee/' and hold the bowl between your two
hands and eat it with shrugged shoulders. On a cold frosty morning, this will make
your whole body warm. Alas! Alas! I think Fll become a farmer for the remainder of
my days!
The Chinese accept food as they accept sex, women and life in general. No great
English poet or writer would condescend to write a Cook Book, which they regard as
belonging outside the realms of literature and worthy of the efforts of Aunt Susan only.
But the great poet-dramatist Li Liweng did not consider it beneath his dignity to write
about the cooking of mushrooms and all kinds of vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods.
Another great poet and scholar, Yuan Mei, wrote a whole book on cooking, besides
writing a most wonderful essay on his cook. He described his cook as Henry James
described the English butler, as a man carrying himself with dignity and
understanding in his profession. But H. G. Wells, who of all English minds is the one
most likely to write about English food, evidently cannot write it, and no hope is to be
expected from the less encyclopaedic minds. Anatole France was the type that might
have left us some wonderful recipe for frying calf's liver or cooking mushrooms,
possibly in his intimate letters, but I doubt very much whether he has left it as part of
his literary heritage.
Two principles distinguish Chinese from European cooking. One is that we eat food
for its textm, the elastic or crisp effect it has on our teeth, as well for fragrance,
flavour and colour. Li Liweng said that he was a slave to crabs, because they had the
combination of fragrance, flavour and colour. The idea of texture is seldom
understood, but a great part of the popularity of bamboo-shoots is due to the fine
resistance the young shoots give to our teeth The appreciation of bamboo-shoots ii
probably the most typical example of our taste. Being not oily, it has a certain
fairy- like "fugitive" quality about it. But the most important principle is that it lends
flavour to meat (especially pork) cooked with it, and, on the other hand, it receives the
flavour of the pork itself. This is the second principle, that of mixing of flavours. The
whole culinary airt of China depends on the art of mixture. While the Ch nese
recognize that many things, like fresh fish, must be cooked in their own juice, in
general they mix flavours a great deal more than Western cooks do. No one, for
instance, knows how cabbage tastes until he has tasted it when properly cooked with
chicken, and the chicken flavour has gone into the cabbage and the cabbage flavour
has gone into the chicken. From this principle of mixture, any number of fine and
delicate combinations can be developed. Celery, for instance, may be eaten raw and
alone, but when Chinese see, in a foreign dinner, vegetables like spinach or carrots
cooked separately and then served on the same plate with pork or roast goose, they
smile at the barbarians.
The Chinese, whose sense of proportion is so wonderfully acute in painting and
architecture, seem to have completely lost it in the matter of food, to which they give
themselves whole-heartedly when they seat themselves around a dinnertable. Any big
course, like the fat duck, coming after twelve or thirteen other courses, should be a
sufficient meal in itself for any human being. This is due to a false standard of
courtesy, and to the fact that as course after course is served during dinners, the
people are supposed to be occupied in different wine-games or contests of poetry
during the intervals, which naturally lengthens the time required and gives more time for the stomach to assimilate the food. Most probably the relatively lower efficiency
of Chinese government officials is due directly to the fact that all of them are
subjected to an inhuman routine of three or four dinners a night* One-fourth of their
