What the Chinese Don't Eat (6 page)

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t stop growing old,’ I said, my face flushing.

He explained his pain at seeing me. When he arrived in Britain in 1989, he kept the last newspaper he had from China and stuck it on his wall to remind him of his home and language. He had not returned to China since. My face, 10 years younger, was in that paper, so he was shocked to see me in the flesh. What a typically honest Chinese man.

I asked those laughing students: ‘Do you really enjoy this kind of “Chinese honesty”?’

If it flies, if it swims, or if it has four legs but is not a table or chair, the Chinese eat it. Is that so odd?

I had a house-warming party this week. When it was all very busy I overheard a conversation about Chinese food:

A (a western woman): Could you tell me what Chinese people don’t eat?

B (a Chinese man): Can I answer that the other way round?

A: Yes, of course. You mean what do the Chinese eat?

B: Listen carefully. Everything that flies in the sky which you can see, except airplanes; everything that swims in the river and the sea, except submarines; any four-legged things on the ground, except tables and chairs – that is what we eat.

A: What! Are you kidding?

B: No, I’m not joking.

A: Even cats and dogs?

B: Yes.

A: And foxes?

B: Yes. What’s wrong with that?

A: But some animals are part of the human family – friends and pets. Their lives are not to be eaten.

B: What do you mean – animals’ lives are not for eating? What did your western great, great-grandmother eat?

A: But we are living in a modern civilisation; we should respect natural life more than we used to.

B: Yes, you are right in some ways: if you are not hungry any more, if you have more living materials that can support your life.

This conversation triggered an old memory. In 1991, when
I interviewed some women in Mao Zedong’s home town of Shaoshan in Hunan province, they asked me: ‘We have heard how westerners eat cow every day, is it true? How? But cows feed humans with their milk and hard work. They are the hands of humans on the land, they are our lives, they even cry if you kill something in front of them, they have feelings.’

I knew that those people, whose agriculture depends on such animals, always send old or sick cows to the mountains to let them die there. I understand both ways of thinking – the Chinese peasants’ and the westerners’. I told the women what I had read about disapproving western views on how Chinese eat cats and dogs. They listened to me with their heads shaking.

Then another snatch of conversation caught my attention at the party.

X (a Chinese woman): Oh, yes. I remember that restaurant is in Guangzhou, but I have never been.

Y (a western man): Why not? You are Chinese. I was told that it is the most famous dish in China. What’s it called – ‘Dragon Fights Tiger’?

X: Yes, or ‘Dragon with Tiger’. It is very famous in south China, I know, but I really can’t imagine I would enjoy it. I have never tasted either cat or snake.

Y: You are not typically Chinese, at least not a traditional one.

X: … not every Chinese likes to eat wild animals.

They were talking about a very famous restaurant in Guangzhou – the capital of Guangdong province. It has a speciality called ‘Dragon and Tiger’ which is made from a snake (dragon) and a cat (tiger) together in a kind of traditional canister dish. I was invited to try it in 1996, but I couldn’t bear to either.

A western friend turned to me. ‘Xinran, have you heard about the wild-food restaurant in Guilin [a beautiful area in the southwest part of China]?’ I told her a story about some English
friends. This middle-aged couple went to Guilin in late spring of 1998. One day, after a morning tour, their Chinese guide suggested they taste the local food. They went to a little wild-food restaurant by a beautiful river. A waiter talked them through their special menu: everything is alive, you can choose what you want from the animal yard by the kitchen, then they cook your choice in front of you.

The English woman was so shocked, she cried: ‘No, no, please don’t kill these lovely animals!’

The waiter was surprised. ‘What? This is our business. What about our livelihood?’

‘Yes, I understand,’ the husband said. ‘Let’s see, is there any way we could consider both human and animal welfare?’

Eventually, they had a deal: the couple paid about $500 for all of the animals in that yard and let them free. The English couple then sat down to a vegetarian noodle lunch.

The next morning, the guide was woken by a telephone call. It was the owner of that little wild-food restaurant: ‘Are you still with that English couple? Could you bring them back to my restaurant again? I will pay you double.’

‘Why?’

‘OK, just between us. I woke up this morning to find most of the animals that they freed yesterday have come back to the kitchen yard.’

New Year’s Eve in Shanghai: China’s young are happy, carefree and changing fast

When the bells rang in the new year I was standing by a huge window on the 33rd floor of the Hong Kong SQ hotel in Shanghai with my husband and son. We pressed our warm faces to the cold glass to see the flashing and crowded street at the foot of the 50-storey building in the centre of this city of 20 million people. We stayed by the window for the last 15 minutes of 2003 and the first 20 minutes of 2004.

My son PanPan was really excited, and described the fireworks that lit up the city in many colours as a ‘computer-designed picture’. I do not think the Chinese man who invented fireworks almost 2,000 years ago could have imagined that they would be a part of modern life in such a computer-controlled world. But I see more of China becoming part of today compared with the last time I went back, only six months ago. The two skyscrapers outside our window were not there last year. Roadside public welfare signs carrying the instructions ‘Do not spit’, ‘Wash your hands before you eat’ and ‘Help needy strangers’ are new. In the newly cleaned public toilets, which used to leave so many foreigners embarrassed, toilet paper has appeared.

We had our last meal of 2003 in a restaurant called Little South State (Xiao-Nan-Guo), which serves traditional Shanghai food, prepared according to ancient methods. My husband Toby, who has been to China at least twice a year since the early 90s, and is one of the few westerners who can eat most Chinese food, such as snake, ducks’ feet and pigs’ kidneys, was surprised by what he saw around us: there were many extended Chinese
families (at least three generations together) having their New Year’s Eve dinner in a place that used to be frequented by drunken governors and businessmen. People ate ‘endless’ dishes, which they ordered from a menu the size of a book. The ‘drunk prawns’ woke up and jumped out of diners’ mouths, ‘crab with eggs’ was beautifully displayed, raw fish arranged like ‘seasonal flowers’ bloomed at the table and Shanghai veget-ables brought spring green to people’s desires for the new year.

There were about 800 other diners with us, although that was far fewer than when we had dinner in Nanjing in the autumn of 2002. Then, 5,000 people sat down to eat together in a restaurant called Xiang-Yang Fishing House.

After dinner, we had to go for a walk to settle our full stomachs. Along the Huai-Hai Road, adorned by neon lights and given voice by the crowds, we noticed that people in China are much more relaxed and happy today than we have ever seen them in the past. Toby said he would never have believed that the modern world would arrive in China so soon. He was very moved by Chinese people’s behaviour at the new year: ‘clean and not drunk’ in the streets of Shanghai, because he knows the Chinese like to drink strong alcohol.

I hardly slept for the first night of 2004 because my mobile didn’t stop bleeping with messages. Some were greetings from my friends. Some were from companies with information on shopping, travel and sales, offering body and foot massage, help with finding a lover, help with homework, house-cleaning, secondhand goods and weather forecasts. Some were from young people playing at ‘new politicians’: ‘Don’t say Bin Laden is too bad, don’t think Bush is too kind, no oil no mad, let’s see what those Americans mind …’; ‘Think of Mao Ze-Dong, you won’t be in pain (no more than the past); think of Deng Xiao-Ping, you won’t lose money (get what you can get from opportunities
coming your way); think of your parents, you won’t be alone (in your family); think of love, you won’t be a child (grow up for the future); think of me, you have someone to send this message to you at the new year …’

I learn a lot from my mobile when I am in China, about what young Chinese think, what they need and what they can do, from those short sentences on its tiny screen.

I flew back to London on January 2. There were so many Chinese in their late teens and early 20s in first class; they must come from rich or powerful families. How many of them can there be in China where 78% of the population are still peasants, half of whom have no education? I remember a student who came to Britain on a scholarship telling me his mother said to him on the phone from her small village: ‘Take care, my son. Don’t open the window when the plane is flying. It could be too windy.’

I really miss those Chinese mothers in today’s China.

Shanghai has a new skyline but why does the woman who used to clean my ears have a new face?

I feel overcome by dizziness since my trip to China. I had felt dizzy a lot while I was there over the new year. I was made dizzy by the time difference, the busy schedule, parents’ questions, brother’s suggestions, friends calling; and the view of Shanghai, magically changed by the hundreds of new buildings erected in the last six months; the restaurant menus, now full of dishes I had never heard of; people’s conversations in the street and on the radio, which sound so much more relaxed and free – pointing out some governor’s corruption, judging a love affair, talking about sex, things I never dared talk about on the radio before 1997. I feel dizzy.

I almost fell over one morning when I took my son PanPan to Shanghai railway station for his short trip to Nanjing where my parents live. Every year I arrange some train trips to help PanPan’s understanding of Chinese daily life. I don’t believe PanPan will see China well enough if he always travels by plane.

Anyway, someone called my name as I dropped PanPan off and was heading out of the railway station. I looked around and couldn’t find anyone I knew in the crowd. Then I heard a very loud voice in my right ear. ‘Hi, Xinran, it’s me, Li-Ping. Wait!’

There were groups of people all around: some peasants with huge amounts of luggage (they no longer seem to carry their belongings in dirty rolls) were eating some Chinese
baozi
(a steamed dumpling with meat inside); two country businessmen, in their suits, were talking about a factory deal
through a cloud of smoke; a young western-looking woman with a red suitcase and green handbag was talking on her mobile phone; one city couple were helping an old man with his luggage. They must have just bought a lot of gifts for his trip. I couldn’t see anyone among them that I knew. But it was without question my name.

‘It is me, Xinran. I am glad that even
you
can’t recognise me … ha … ha-ha …’ The western woman was laughing at me. ‘Are you sure you know me?’ What a stupid question! I deeply regretted it.

‘I am your friend, Li-Ping! We worked together more than four years in that old broadcasting house before we moved to the new building. Oh, I can’t believe my face change has been so successful.’

The voice sounded familiar, but I really couldn’t remember who she was. I have a friend called Li-Ping, who has a beautiful Chinese traditional face. But this woman had a typical western nose and golden brown hair. Something must be wrong. ‘Oh, my dear, I haven’t got time to play games with you. I have to catch my train. Let me give you some context … You must remember me, with my habit of “digging out people’s ears”.’

‘Oh.
Oh
…
my God
, Li-Ping, it is
you
!’ Of course I knew Li-Ping. She used to look forward so much to cleaning everybody’s ears out in our radio station that sometimes she even paid people to let her do her ear-cleaning work. Yes, I did make some money from this. ‘What’s happened to your face? Are you OK? Where are you going?’

‘Yes, yes. There is so much to say. Here is my card. Call me when I come back from my parents’ home in Su-Zhou. It should be around new year. Good, good. I am so, so glad to see you again. I have to go now – my train leaves at 8am, and it is now 7.45. I must go. Let me give you a big kiss. Don’t worry, I
gave up my ear cleaning a long time ago, just a western kiss … Bye!’

Li-Ping ran to her platform.

Why had she done that? I have read about Chinese women paying high prices, both financially and physically, to change their faces.

I thought I understood them, because most just wanted a better chance of finding an attractive lover, or to improve lives that had been made more difficult by an ugly face, or to have a chance of getting a better job in those big companies run by male bosses.

But Li-Ping? She used to have such a beautiful face, one I was always jealous of. She was a famous radio presenter, who was great fun and loved running after men.

I looked at her card. She was working for a western trade company in Hong Kong. Is this why she had changed her face? For this western job? I don’t know; I hope not. Such a strange feeling of loss: your good, old friend speaks and acts through a stranger’s face.

I looked back at the railway station. I hoped that Li-Ping’s parents would recognise their daughter. I felt completely dizzy.

Chinese new year has suddenly made me doubt how well I know my own culture

‘Happy Chinese new year!’ ‘
Xin-nian-kuai-le
!’ (
xin-nian
, meaning new year;
kuai-le
, meaning happy) has been said endlessly since January 14 – by people who think they understand Chinese culture, not by Chinese people themselves, that is. I thought it wasn’t yet Chinese new year, but I was corrected at a Chinese new year party held at the beginning of January.