Unit 3 Reading AChinese CuisineChinese Culinary ArtsPara. 1Chinese culinary arts are famous all over the world. Chinese dishes appeal to the senses through color, shape, aroma and taste. Chinese cuisine’s entree normally strives for three to five colors, made up of the main ingredient, and more secondary ingredients of contrasting colors and textures; these are prepared and cooked to enhance their own qualities, with the use of appropriate condiments and garnishing, enabling the chef to present an appealing platter of delicacy. Para. 2When preparing Chinese dishes, the cooks make a strong fragrant aroma to stimulate one’s appetite, by using scallion, fresh ginger, root garlic or chili pepper; with the use of wine, aniseed, cinnamon, peppercorn or sesame oil. Complementary nuances are added. Soy sauce, sugar, vinegar and other seasonings may be used discreetly, adding to the complex play on the taste buds.Para. 3All chefs of the Chinese kitchens, professional or amateur, strive for harmony of sight, smell, taste, texture, so that each individual dish has its unique features highlighted, contrasted and balanced if it is a dinner of many dishes, be it 3, 6, 9 or 12. The flavors must not overpower the food, yet subtle enough to meet the tastes of thosedining. Complex or simple dishes may be prepared quickly or much longer, but the ultimate goal is to share with the guests the play on the eaters’real and imagined visions of the dishes and its ingredients. Para. 4Once the meal is cooked, it is served all at once to the family, who eat with chopsticks and drink soup with a flat-bottomed soup spoon. The average dinner includes a staple —rice, noodles, bread, or pancakes — a meat dish, vegetable, and soup, which serves as a beverage. For formal meals and banquets, there are many successive courses which are served in a strict traditional order. Another point is that over festive periods, with the play of word’s phonetics, felicitous names of dishes may encourage people to guess what they are about to eat, thereby adding fun to eating.Para. 5Chinese food enjoys a high reputation in the world also for its sheer abundance. It is due to the diversity of the climate, products and customs that there are widely different food styles and tastes in local regions.Para. 6For local styles, Beijing cuisine combines the best features of different regional styles. Shandong cuisine represents the Northern dishes. Shandong cooks are good at cooking seafood. Sichuan cooks specialize in chilies and hot peppers and Sichuan dish is famous for aromatic and spicy sauces. Guangdong cooks make use of many ingredients. They look for fresh, tender, crisp textures. Huai Yang cuisinestresses the natural flavors. Dishes are strong but not greasy, and light but delicate. There is a saying that “southerners have a sweet tooth, and northerners crave salt”, but Tan dishes manage to satisfy both. Because China’s local dishes have their own typical characteristics, Chinese food can be divided into eight regional cuisines, the distinction of which is now widely accepted.Everyday Eating Customs in ChinaPara. 7Chinese cuisine culture is deeply rooted in China’s history. There are so many “whys”that you may find so interesting: Why is a fish never turned over? Why do tea-drinkers surreptitiously tap tables? Why are Chinese dinner tables round and how will you know who is the guest of honor?Para. 8The whole meal will be more enjoyable if you know a little of the ancient traditions and beliefs that place the meal in a 5,000-year-old culinary heritage.Para. 9 As a visitor or guest in either a Chinese home or restaurant you will find that table manners are essential and the distinctive courtesies displayed will invariably add to the enjoyment of your meals and keep you in high spirits!(1)Though customs and the kinds of food eaten vary from region to region, it is most common for Chinese families to gather for three meals a day.(2) An individual place setting for an everyday meal includes a bowl of fan (rice), a pair of chopsticks, a flat-bottomed soupspoon, and a saucer. Instead of a napkin, a hot towel is often provided at the start as well as the end of the meal for the diner to wipe his hands and mouth.(3) The real difference is that in the West, you have your own plate of food, while in China all the dishes will be put on the table for everyone’s share. The meat and vegetable dishes are laid out all at once in the center of the table, and the diners eat directly from the communal plates using their chopsticks. Soup is also eaten from the common bowl. Rather than for serving oneself a separate portion, the saucer is used for bones and shells or as a place to rest a bite taken from a communal plate when it is too large to eat all at once.(4) It is perfectly acceptable to reach across the table to take a morsel from a far-away dish. To facilitate access to all the dishes, Chinese dining tables are more likely to be square or round, rather than elongated like their western counterparts.(5) Maybe one of the things that will surprise a Western visitor most is that some of the Chinese hosts would like to put food into the plates of their guests. Usually in formal dinners, there are always “public”chopsticks and spoons for this purpose, but some hosts may still use their own chopsticks. This is a token of genuine friendship and politeness. It is polite to eat the food. If you don’t like to eat it, please just leave thefood in the plate.(6) Eating usually begins in order of seniority, with each diner taking the cue to start from his or her immediate superior.(7) In order to cool the soup a bit and to better diffuse the flavor in the mouth, soup is eaten by sipping from the spoon. This method, of course, produces the slurping noise that is a taboo in the West.(8) Rice is the staple food. To eat fan, a diner raises the bowl to her lips and pushes the grains into her mouth with chopsticks. This is the easiest way to eat it and shows proper enjoyment. The diner must finish the entire bowl of rice, otherwise it is considered bad manners —a lack of respect for the labor of the farmers.(9)People in China tend to over-order food, especially at banquets or get-togethers, for they will find it embarrassing that all the food is consumed or not enough.Reading BOn EatingXia MianzunPara.1 The first word that comes to mind when someone starts to talk about Chinese Lunar New Year is most definitely “eating”. This has its origins in my childhood, and the still-vivid memories of gleefulanticipation, lasting all winter, every winter. We children pined for Spring Festival and everything about it, above all, though, the variety of foods offered. Our anticipation grew stronger with every passing day before the Festival.Para.2 The Chinese are a people of the world particularly skilled at eating. In an average home, when a guest arrives, the host and hostess will get right to work, respectively going out to get the food, then hurrying to the kitchen to prepare a meal. Meanwhile, the guest is usually waiting in the living room, enjoying some watermelon seeds, waiting for mealtime to arrive, listening to the cacophony of bowls, plates, kitchen knife, and cutting board. After the meal, where the purpose of the visit is usually expressed and addressed, the guest will stand and apologize for “Causing so much trouble,”while the host will say “Nothing to it.”Sometimes, the host will even try to convince the guest to stay and say, “Have afternoon tea”or “Stay for dinner”. Para.3On occasions of celebration or mourning, though the ceremony is usually held for its own sake, its substance is still, in fact, about filling the stomach. For the rich, this usually means a feast lasting five to seven continuous days, while for the poor it will take one to three. Through breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and evening snacks, each day is filled with one meal after another, until the wine drunk could almost fill a bathtub and the meat eaten could be piled high.Para.4On the eve of the Lunar New Year, close relatives will exchange food and alternate inviting one family or the other for the New Year’s Eve Meal. During the first several days of the New Year, relatives and friends will visit one another and share a meal or two. We eat at the Dragon Boat Festival in early summer, we eat at the Mid-Autumn Festival, we eat on birthdays, we eat when we gather with friends or when we say farewell to a friend. In fact, on virtually every possible occasion, whether we celebrate or mourn, we eat. It seems as though eating is the start and finish of all things and supersedes everything else.Para.5Children will ask their Mother for a nickel or two several times a day for the snacks they eat to keep them happy, in addition to the three meals they eat to keep them sated. For an adult, the first rule of morality is to let your parents eat well. Learning to cook has always been a critical part of the traditional education of girls in China. The Analects testify that Confucius himself likes good food. “The finer the grain the better, the more exquisite the meat the better,”he writes. “Go and buy wine as well as bacon.”He would not deign to eat “meat improperly cut”!A man can be proud if his wife can prepare delicate dishes. Many scholars have also taken pains to try their hands at writing a gourmet’s handbook.Para.6In Chinese culture, it is not only the spirits and humans who like to eat, but Deities, too. Gods of the mountains and rivers, despite beingmouthless, will enjoy a pig head, or perhaps even the whole animal. In some areas, it is the goat or ox that is offered as a sacrifice in return for good weather and a bountiful harvest, or protection from floods and droughts, among other things. There are even convenient books and calendars passed down in which you can find the Deities’personal preference for sacrifices. Compared to those Deities of pageants who are idealistic in their desire for only hymns and worship, the Deities of the Chinese seem extremely materialistic.Para.7The poet, Mei Cun, once wrote, “Out of every ten shops of buying, three serve wine and are places of dine.”He is right. While the West is full of banks, China is filled with restaurants. As the saying goes，“There are seven tasks awaiting you the moment you open the door every morning.”Indeed, the most burdensome task that comes with running a home is not educating children or anything else, but preparing the day’s three meals. In a school, the most difficult thing to handle is perhaps not improving the teaching or the teachers themselves, but rather disorder in the school cafeteria.Para.8The list of cooking techniques is endless, too: roast, stew, steam, pickle, fry, boil, treat with liquor, broil, saute, scramble, cold blend, etc. Some great chefs of the past have had their names committed to history books, where they glimmer alongside those of great statesmen and generals. It seems that even this was not enough, and some lucky oneswere even promoted to premier or chancellor. If there is one thing on which China can pride itself, it would not be its long and unbroken civilization, nor its vast territory, nor its great population, its mighty army, or noble military history. It would have to be the vibrancy of its cuisine and its people’s love of eating. It seems that Chinese cuisine has conquered much of the world. There is a saying that the Chinese are best at using three kinds of knives; the first of these is the kitchen knife, of course (with the other two being the barber’s knife and the foot doctor’s knife).Para.9Have you ever seen that picture of the three Deities, often hung in the hall of a pious and reverent household? To have the blessing of the three Deities, Fathers Fu, Lu, and Shou, who represent prosperous posterity, wealth and authority, and health and longevity, respectively, is the goal of every Chinese. Depicted in the center of the picture is Father Lu, on his right, Father Fu and his left, Father Shou. In the simplest sense, Father Lu represents good food. Lao Tzu, the great Chinese philosopher in the age before Christ, also said once that “the multitude should have their brains empty and their stomach filled”and “Saints rule by keeping their people from starvation, not from boredom.”As you can see, eating always comes first for the Chinese, who would easily forget all else. Among sex, gambling, hedonism, and luxurious clothes —the most common sins and pleasures —people here all regard a fondnessfor eating as most venial. “Vanity is vain, good food is good for the body, gambling never really wins, and too much sex ends in nothing.”Ultimately, other than being sated with good food, all is meaningless. Para.10The Chinese fondness of eating has lent many colorful expressions to their mother tongue. The simple word “chi”, to eat, by virtue of numerous extended meanings has become perhaps most complicated in the Chinese language. It is commonly used as the substitute for the words “have”or “suffer”in English. For example, “Have been taken advantage of”is “chi kui.”“Have had a slap in the face”is “chi erguang.”“To long for things one is not worth of”is “to dream to ‘chi’the meat of a swan.”“Being sued by somebody”is “chi guansi.”To be hit by a bullet is to “chi zidan”. In addition, there are expressions in the Shanghai dialect, such as “chi shenghuo”and “chi paitou”, meaning “to be beaten”and “to be scolded.”Casual greetings for most peoples are usually “Good Morning,”“Good Afternoon,”and “Good Evening.”For Chinese, it is “Had your breakfast?”“Had your lunch?”or “Had your dinner?”You can express your line of work with “chi ... fan”(have a certain bowl of rice). For instance, “chi du fan,”means to make a living in the gambling trade. “Chi tangzi fan’, means to run a brothel. “Chi yanghang fan”means to be a comprador, and so on. What’s more, for serious things like religious beliefs or service in the army entrusted with the protection ofthe country, the Chinese use “chi”to denote a level of devotion, rather than a way for making a living. Colloquially, Catholics in China are called those who “chi tianzhujiao de.”And other Christians are the “chi yesujiao de.”Those in the army are not usually called soldiers or servicemen but rather “chi huangliang de,”meaning those who get their rice from the government. Lately, new phrases have emerged, like “chi dang fan”or “chi sanminzhuyi,”meaning those working for the Kuomintang and the followers of Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary doctrines.Para.11Originally, it was human nature to be concerned about clothing, dining, housing and travelling, the basic elements of everyday life. Man, of course, would not survive without eating. However, no country outside China has connotations of the word for eating so complicated, concern for eating so serious and conspicuous, cuisine methods so complicated, the variety of foods so wide-ranging, or the appearance that nothing seems to matter more than eating. It seems that Chinese could put up with dirty clothes, a shabby dwelling, and muddy streets, but never with perfunctory meals. Among those four basic concerns of a human being, the importance of eating is greater than everything else, a rather awkward tendency and philosophy, I think. It is as though the Chinese culture is one based solely on a concern for stuffing one’s mouth.Para.12In Buddhism, the Buddha divides all beings into six echelons: the Heavenly, the Human Being, the Daemon, the Animal, the Hell, and the Starving Ghost. If we believe in this division as well as Samsara or Transmigration preached by Buddha, one might wonder whether the Chinese are all born into the sixth echelon, the Starving Ghosts.Reading CInspiration for ChangePara.1Taste is more important than anything else as far as food is concerned. The Chinese have never restricted themselves to a certain tedious food list. With their understanding of food, the Chinese are always looking for an inspiration for change.Para.2Once the clouds clear up, Yao Guiwen moves the split-bamboo baskets to the terrace. He and his wife have spent days making the tofu balls. Some tofu has already turned yellowish. But that’s far from enough. Yao has to wait several days more. When it gets hard and shriveled and the skin turns black, then the tofu has matured. The change is because of fermentation.Para.3 Wang Cuihua tightly wraps the shapeless tender tofu with gauze and squeezes out the water. Then the tofu takes shape. There is no time to lose. The fresh tofu will quickly turn sour. It means Wang has to work very quickly without rest.Para.4 A basin of charcoal fire of proper heat will be the key to Yao’s work in the afternoon.Para.5Jianshui in Honghe Prefecture of Yunnan Province was named Lin’an in ancient times. It was once an important city in southwest China during the past 1,200 years. Its brilliance has gradually faded with the passage of time. Just like many other towns in Yunnan, Jianshui is a multi-ethnic settlement. Different cultures have merged here, conjuring a unique atmosphere.Para.6The tough tofu quickly inflates in the heat of charcoal fire. It reminds people of fermented flour. People of Jianshui like enjoying this special air-dried and fermented flavor. People can enjoy the tofu with varied sauces. But for Yao, the texture of tofu is the most important. Para.7 Tofu easily ferments in the warm weather of the river valley area. And the mildly dry air prevents it from rotting. Yao is more sensitive than anyone else to the subtle relations between wind, water, sunshine and tofu.Para.8This is the famous Daban Well of Jianshui. Beside the well, women set up a production line of tofu by just using their fingers. Para.9Water is a necessity in every procedure of making tofu. With a total of 128 wells in Jianshui, local residents are well versed with water. The Chinese believe water nourishes the spirit and mind of people. Just like water to tofu, the common points speak for themselves.Para.10The ancient town of Shiping is less than 40km from Jianshui. Tofu here has a completely different look. The finished product is shockingly big. But it’s unusually tenacious. And it almost doesn’t crumble. A dash of salt can best preserve tofu’s freshness.Para.11Yunnan has never been a major soybean production area, but it has a long history of making tofu. One corn for one piece of tofu. There is a tacit agreement between the buyer and the seller.Para.12For the past three decades, Yao’s tofu stall has never been quiet. It takes half an hour to walk from the stall to home and Yao has to go across almost the entire town. The rapid development has changed many aspects of Jianshui. As time goes by, some variables have disappeared and others, altered. And new ones are added. But there are some that stand the tests of time and remain.Para.13The Yao’s life centered on tofu is watery and hard. The biggest wish of the husband is to fish in the big lake far away. He has no merits but only shortcomings. To the couple, every piece of tofu is precious. It helps them to support their children and sustain a happy family life. Para.14In the past over 1,000 years, with rounds of northern immigration, tofu, the representative of central China’s food culture, has taken roots in the abundant land on the southwest border. And it has developed its unique disposition. The production details remind us of the hinter land of central China that is thousands of miles away. There, frombirth to prosperity, tofu has enjoyed a history of 2,000 years.Para.15Hu Xuebing is on his way to the county town. He needs to sell his tofu at the morning market.Para.16Shouxian County is an old little town in the north Anhui Province, people there has a special attachment to tofu. They believe their ancestors invented the great tofu. In middle October, soybeans in north Anhui have already been ripped and stored. Tofu made with newly harvested soybeans has always been the most popular in China’s thousands years old history of agriculture. Soybean has long occupied an important position among the well-known legumes. Soybean is the richest in protein and the cheapest sustenance, but it was once in an awkward position. Cooked soybeans failed to wet people’s appetite and, to make matters worse, caused flatulence. People urgently needed to find the best way to consume soybeans.Para.17The white powder on scale is gypsum, the key to turn spy milk into tofu. Hu Xuebing can use gypsum as skillfully as his ancestors.When the denatured protein meets the g ypsum, the boiling soy milk quickly, coagulates. The change is so drastic that it can be seen in a bli nk of eye.Para.18 Gypsum often appeared in secret scriptures of Chinese war locks. It is said that was how the relation between gypsum and tofuoriginally started. Over 2,000 year ago, Liu An, the king of Huan’nan was addicted to alchemy when nurturing a immortal pill in soymilk. He happened to add some gypsum in it. Many people believe that’s how tofo was invented, regardless of whether the reality was as dramatic as the story. Chinese must be groping for a long time before finally making tofu a great food of china. The invention of tofu however completely changes the fate of soybeans.Para.19The great flexibility of tofu offers huge room for the imagination of the Chinese well-known for the culinary skills. The disadvantages of soybeans were eliminated by reason or unconsciously. As the ancient Chinese transform soybeans into tofu, the use of soybean protein reaches the climax. Chinese cooks’understanding of tofu will often take you by surprise. Maybe it is also correct to say that the Chinese are showing their adaptability through tofu, and thus, soybeans have been sublimated. The milky juice arouses many thoughts in our mind.。
