Fieldnotes From History (4)—Cuisine

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Fieldnotes From History."

[a] Oil RF

Part of an occasional “Round and Square” series that follows the blog’s main theme (east meets west, round meets square, and past meets present), these snippets from my early fieldnotes are reproduced as they were written by hand—and then revised on an ancient desktop computer—during my first fieldwork stay in Taiwan (1985-1987).  All entries are the way that I left them when I returned to the United States in 1987 (some nicely-stated and some embarrassing). I will allow myself an occasional comment when something makes me wince after a quarter century.

[b] Green RF

Comment
I am struck by two matters in these notes, both of which startle me (somewhat) after twenty-five years. First, I can't get over the utter banality of these observations. While they are not particularly embarrassing, I wonder why I was trying to explain some of it. Remember (from the introduction to this series) that these were small parts of "fieldletters," as I call them, meant to be read by others. It seems that I was trying to explain things more clearly to an audience that did not have many Chinese culinary sources in the United States then. Second, and most importantly, I am bothered by my own breeziness in the final paragraph. Cruelty bothers me much more as I have gotten older, and I don't find such anecdotes remotely humorous. I am not sure that I found it "funny" back then (I recall being perplexed by the story. Still, I am surprised by what at least appears in rhetorical terms as youthful callousness.

7 May 1985

Taipei

The food here deserves a paragraph or two (actually a library) of its own. I have worked three restaurant outings a week into my budget, but have been known to double that figure. Sunday a small group of us ate Beijing (Northern, Mandarin) cuisine at a place called the Celestial Kitchen. The meal began with appetizers: cabbage and carrot slices in a sour sauce, peanuts, and a hot, spicy dish of whole sardines and bamboo shoots. The main courses consisted of steamed mushrooms and little cabbages, mutton and green onions, and diced chicken in bean sauce. Northern cooking uses many varieties of bean sauces. After tasting what they do for Chinese food, I don’t want to limit myself to soy sauce again.

Thursday night I had a Sichuan meal. Sichuan cuisine specializes in, among other things, little marble-sized dumplings in a thick, hot sauce. There was an excellent noodle dish, burnt green beans (a Sichuan specialty all the Chinese rave over, but I’m not too crazy about), and a wonderful little dish made from the lining of a goat’s stomach. Sichuan food is hot, Chinese say, because Sichuan province is cold and damp in the winter. The spice takes the chill out of your bones.

A week ago I had Shanghai cuisine, which is characterized by its oleaginous quality and its seafoods. There were appetizers, shrimp with pea pods, chicken with cashew nuts, pork cabbage soup, and fried rolls. The rolls here are great. You can order them steamed or fried; they have a wonderful doughy taste that is hard to describe. I first tried them at a few restaurants in Vancouver, but had no idea of their diversity until I came here.

I have sampled all the major cuisines of China so far (Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghai—the “a” in Shanghai is soft, like the “a” in father—Sichuan, Hunan) and a few of the minor ones, too. Now, I am spreading out and finding the best restaurants which serve each. I have found that those bigger restaurants with atmosphere (the ones foreign guidebooks recommend) are, not surprisingly, not usually those with the best food. I have had some of the best meals with small groups in tiny little restaurants where no one speaks English. All the cuisines are very different, and it’s hard to pick a single favorite, although, if pressed, I might choose Sichuan. The only problem with eating Chinese food here is that there are usually only a handful of us; it is difficult to sample a wide array of dishes. The ideal number of people for eating Chinese food is six to twelve. That way you can order one dish per person, and share them all.

I have enjoyed the wonderful Chinese food here, although I have stuck to “traditional” cuisine. Usually in the winter, Chinese “exotic” cuisine specializes in cooking tigers, snakes, puppies, and small rodents. Dog meat is called [香肉] “fragrant meat.”  At some restaurants they boil it in a fire pot with cabbage, beancurd, and noodles. It is supposed to warm your bones in the cold weather. I haven’t been that cold yet. Maybe cooking puppies is the culinary line, beyond which my ethnocentrism takes over. There is another dish that everyone knows about, but no one seems actually to have eaten, that is made of live, newborn mice. It is called a “three squeal meal,” a name worthy of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The newborns can’t see, so they lie squirming on the plate above a bed of spinach. When you pinch one between your chopsticks, you hear squeal number one. When you dip them in the hot sauce, you hear squeal number two. Finally, when you pop them into your mouth and bite down, you hear the third, and final, squeal.      

Comment (just in case you missed it above...since the last paragraph bothers me a great deal now):
I am struck by two matters in these notes, both of which startle me (somewhat) after twenty-five years. First, I can't get over the utter banality of these observations. While they are not particularly embarrassing, I wonder why I was trying to explain some of it. Remember (from the introduction to this series) that these were small parts of "fieldletters," as I call them, meant to be read by others. It seems that I was trying to explain things more clearly to an audience that did not have many Chinese culinary sources in the United States then. Second, and most importantly, I am bothered by my own breeziness in the final paragraph. Cruelty bothers me much more as I have gotten older, and I don't find such anecdotes remotely humorous. I am not sure that I found it "funny" back then (I recall being perplexed by the story.) Still, I am surprised by what at least appears in rhetorical terms as youthful callousness.