THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY STEAMED FISH

When eating in Chinatown one gets to watch other diners. Which is part of the entertainment, but please don't stare.
Families are always fun to watch, especially now that children can play video games on cell-phones after they've sated their bestial passions. You might think that withdrawing so spectacularly and selfishly from the social hubbub of a shared meal would be frowned upon -- and indeed it is -- but this often keeps them quiet, and allows their parents to have a pleasant private conversation and thoroughly enjoy each other's company.
While entirely in public.

Just watching that table over at the far end of the room, I can tell that the sons will grow up to be anti-social engineering students and devious loners, whereas the little girl may end up as a brainsurgeon or a pilot. How very fortunate for her that when she marries, she becomes someone else's kin! She'll have a splendid excuse for never associating with her bratty brothers again.


There are different dynamics that inform the gustatory attitudes for males and females in the Cantonese world. Because of the idea that one should eat with others, males take it for granted that there will be someone with whom to eat, females assume that they will have to make a pretense of eating, while nevertheless playing second fiddle around the table. And while some women relish the prospect -- oh good, there is food, and I can have some, and talk a little bit, too -- many think of meals as obligatory, rather than primarily a source of joy. Except when they get to eat by themselves, in which case it's a delicious expression of stubbornness and pleasure, and they can eat whatever they want.
Boys, on the other hand, tend toward a casual assumption that their dining is a significant and praiseworthy social act, even a generous sharing of their time. The most likeable ones can always find friends with whom to go out and feast -- even if it's just shared stirfry and a tiny steamed fish at the only Cantonese restaurant in some Kansas college town -- and will gladly include other people (while unconsciously excluding some), as long as they all get to sit around the table making a communal racket.


Single women dining may regret the solitude -- though that isn't necessarily a given -- but they will be determined to enjoy the food. It's theirs, dammit, and it's yummy!
The solitary man often has an expression on his face that says he didn't play his cards right, life isn't supposed to be like this, where is everybody?

She enjoys every bite, even though there's far too much; he can't finish it all, he doesn't really have an appetite.


Oh heck, there's any number of operational themes to Cantonese people engaged in consuming food; not a single idea dominates, and many elements are utterly at war with each other. Suffice to say that eating occupies a much larger place in their social realm, and demands far more of their emotional investment, than it does for severe white protestants and people from places where the food is almost uniformly ghastly.
Pretty much everyone from the Ireland east to Siberia.
With some exceptions, of course.

Imagine, if you will, a Cantonese couple sharing a steamed fish, in a noisy crowded restaurant. She's thinking "that fish at the other table is much BIGGER!" While he thinks "this is MY fish..., oh wait no, ours.......... "
If they end up struggling for the bill (assuming that she's a liberated woman and insists on paying), she'll be thinking "next time we get the biggest dang fish they have here!" And he'll wrestle with the thought of ordering TWO fish, one of which he can take home and have for breakfast.

Of course, she might be wrestling with the same thought. Women are complex that way.

If a man really loves a woman, he'll let her have most of the fish, and almost all of the scallion and ginger crab, as well as the oysters with black bean and green pepper, while he makes a pretense of eating just so she doesn't feel guilty or self-conscious. And if she really loves him, she'll insist that he have this piece, and that, in between happily stuffing her face, while totally ignoring the other customers.

Especially that sour bunch of Mandarin speakers at the other table.

I still can't understand why those Northerners even came in. Only three of the seven ate anything. And two of them ordered food that couldn't be shared (wonton noodle soup, fried stick-noodle with beef).
Well, it COULD have been shared.
But it wasn't.


I had what I often order when I'm dining by myself.
Fish collops and bitter-melon over rice.
Plus far too much hot tea.

I really like crunchy vegetables.
But I also like fish.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================