Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories (27 page)

‘He [the Gentleman] did not eat food that was not properly prepared nor did he eat except at the proper times. He did not eat food that had not been properly cut up, nor did he eat unless the proper sauce was available. ’

CONFUCIUS, THE ANALECTS
,
C
.
500 BC

Chinese people enjoy food to the full, but in its right place and at the right time. Food is central to ceremonies and festivals; families and friends come together to eat at every opportunity, and no expense or effort is spared when entertaining. I have mentioned that when Chinese people eat together, the main topic of conversation is food, and there is plenty to talk about: the number of dishes, their flavour and fragrance, different ingredients and preparation methods.

Meals in China may appear complicated and elaborate compared to their Western counterparts, yet attitudes to food are relaxed because everyone knows that ‘appetite for food and sex is natural’ (Mencius).
¹⁵
In our modern Western society, on the other hand, missing meals, snacking on the run, all seem to be something to be proud of. Yet the same people who boast about not having time to eat admit (more quietly) to chocolate cravings, late-night fridge raiding, binge eating, and worse.

My grandfather used to tell me to ‘breakfast like a king, lunch like a lord and sup like a pauper’. The same ideas are expressed in the Chinese saying ‘
zao shang chi hao, zhong wu
chi bao, wanshang chi shao’
(‘eat well in the morning, till you are full for lunch, and lightly in the evening’). In China most families eat their evening meal around six o’clock, sometimes even earlier. As they have generally eaten a substantial lunch, the evening meal tends to be lighter than the one we enjoy in the West, though still following the same Chinese format of several dishes with rice. Washing up is not time-consuming, a few bowls and a wok, so there is plenty of time in the evening for some kind of exercise or gentle activity.

Three meals a day in China means three meals, not two overprocessed dry snacks with a token garnish of shrivelled lettuce and something out of the microwave for supper. Often, there is little difference between the types of foods served at each meal. We have already seen the benefits of
zhou
in the morning, but breakfast is also as likely to include vegetables, protein foods and a range of flavours just as in any other meal of the day.

In Beijing if you haven’t time to cook you can pick up freshly made dumplings and porridge on every street corner. Beancurd sellers make a special dish called
doufu nao
out of the residue of their cottage industry. Of course, no child brought up on Coco Pops is going to change to sloppy beancurd overnight, not even if it is stewed with lily buds and wood-ear fungus. When we stayed with Guo Gui Lan in the countryside, she was sensitive to my younger children’s picky eating habits and would make them piles of shredded potato and smashed cucumber to eat with their millet porridge and eggs. I lack both her single-mindedness and her dexterity with the chopper, so I’m rather less ambitious, but every day I make
zhou
for those who like it and real muesli for those who don’t. On very cold days I make traditional Scottish porridge, with salt and water, not milk and sugar. And if there is any
cai
left over (sadly not that often), we eat it; cabbage and tofu, tomato and eggs, sliced mushrooms and onion are particularly popular, and I often fry up the leftover rice.

At lunch-time, the Chinese avoid eating on the run if they possibly can. Yes, they have a street food tradition, but the piles of dumplings, stuffed breads and polystyrene boxes of rice topped with
cai
sold from the street hawkers are either shared at roadside tables or taken back to work and eaten in a convivial atmosphere. While I had always been aware of the sanctity of the Chinese lunch hour, it wasn’t until Liu Shifu came into our lives that I became aware of the magnitude of the issue.

Liu Shifu was a driver. Ironically, it was our move into a
hutong
(courtyard) home in the narrow streets of ‘real China’, a good hour’s drive from my children’s school, that prompted us to add him to our burgeoning household. Our new home, chosen to provide a suitable backdrop for my cooking school, was within the second ringroad that runs along the ancient foundations of the demolished walls of Beijing – and a little outside our comfort zone in China. But I knew the moment I entered the courtyard and saw the wisteria-clad walls and raised walkways that people would travel to learn in these surroundings. On the north side of the courtyard stood a spectacular room with high ceilings, ornate doors and hanging lanterns, The fact that we would have to walk outside in sub zero temperatures to reach our bedrooms seemed a minor price to pay for the privilege of such a home.

Liu Shifu joined us to take the children to school, and brought the twelfth secret of the Chinese food culture right into our
hutong
home.
Shi fu
, best translated as ‘craftsman’, is a polite way of addressing an adult male, but if pronounced incorrectly, as apparently was my habit, it sounds like the word for ‘comfortable’, so our driver was soon nicknamed ‘Comfortable Liu’. It seemed an apt irony given that he was tall, thin and bony with piercing eyes and had been a martial arts champion in his youth. The name stuck and the children became fond of him, though I don’t think he found his day comfortable at all since they fought incessantly as he struggled through the Beijing traffic on the journey to school.

When you employ a driver in China, he is full time. This had its advantages as Xiao Ding lived near the International School, so after he dropped off the children he would pick her up and get back just in time for the start of cooking school at 10 o’clock. The problem was what should he do after that? Usually drivers hung out with other drivers, but we lived in Chinese
hutong
with no other foreigners around, and so no other drivers for him to pass the day with. Occasionally I would see him in the courtyard making long flowing movements but I worried that the rest of the time he must be bored out of his mind. Tim, who had found him in the first place, told me firmly, ‘Give him something to do. He’s much happier driving around than doing nothing. ’

So I put together a list of errands and, after cooking school had finished, went to look for him. He wasn’t in the kitchen or outside, nor was the car. I wandered up and down the street and was just about to go back to the courtyard to ask Xiao Ding if she could throw any light on the matter when the shopkeeper from the
xiao mai bu
, or ‘little store’, opposite asked me if I was looking for Liu Shifu.

I nodded assent. ‘
Ta chi fan qu le
,’ she said, ‘he’s gone for lunch’. That made sense, though I was surprised that he had left it so late. ‘What time did he leave?’ I asked. ‘Eleven thirty,’ she replied, ‘he always does. ’

Apparently, every day he drove across to the Lido area of town, where he had formerly been based at Tim’s office, to eat lunch with other members of his
dan wei
, or ‘work unit’. I never tried to understand why he was entitled to this meal; my concern was more to do with the logistics. The office was a good half hour’s drive from our
hutong
. ‘But at lunch-time the traffic is very heavy and it might take up to an hour to get there,’ Liu told me in a matter of fact manner.

I discussed the whole problem with Xiao Ding, suggesting that she might knock up some fried rice or noodles for him. ‘Chinese adults don’t like to eat fried rice in the middle of the day; they expect a full meal –
fan
and
cai
,’ she explained. ‘But there are at least a dozen inexpensive good restaurants in the vicinity of this
hutong
,’ I said later to Comfortable Liu. ‘Can’t you get lunch at one of them?’ He replied that his lunch at the Lido office was free. ‘But I don’t mind paying,’ I insisted. ‘It’ll be a fraction of the cost of the petrol, not to mention the wear and tear on the car. ’ I was getting a bit hysterical.

Liu Shifu ate a couple of meals in a local restaurant but soon started to drive to his home, which was even further away than the Lido. I had paid for his meal as soon as he gave me the receipts so was still puzzled as to his motives. ‘Is there a problem with the restaurant food?’ I probed. No, it was fine he told me, better than at the office and much better than his wife’s cooking. I realized then that I was in a classic ‘China situation’. Liu Shifu could not tell me why he was not prepared to eat on his own at a restaurant because, so great was his perception of the difference between our two cultures, he knew that if I had to ask the question I would not be able to understand the answer.

The reason was that Chinese people just do not eat alone if there is any other option available. Mealtimes are not just about good food, they are about sharing good food, and company. The whole nature of the traditional multi-course Chinese meal is designed for multiple persons. My cooking school eventually employed three assistants and I noticed that it didn’t matter how late they finished, they would always cook up a few dishes and eat them together. There never seemed to be any argument about what they ate, usually a medley of whatever leftovers were in the fridge, and no one seemed to have any dislikes or even particular preferences. These everyday meals in the kitchen had the atmosphere of an informal lunch party, yet I doubted that I could carry one off with the same aplomb had I been planning it all week.

In China, the food and company generally take precedence over the table settings and the immediate environment. A small bowl and a pair of chopsticks is all that is needed for a multi-course meal. Even at formal banquets where the china is fine and chopsticks silver-plated, the array of utensils is minimalist compared to the Western equivalent. This simplicity seems contradictory to the rituals and feasts of China’s imperial history. But although China’s emperors are famous for their elaborate banquets and ceremonies and even today formal meals can be quite a performance, these occasions are all about communication and solidarity. The overriding sentiment is that meals are about giving and sharing as much as about good food to sustain life.

More about chopsticks

Chopsticks make the Chinese dining experience and are yet another manifestation of
yin
and
yang
, as one chopstick alone has no function without the other but as a pair they make complete sense, although the two sticks have no point of contact.

The fact that chopsticks were ever introduced at all says a lot about the Chinese diet, as they are ideal for picking up roots, shoots and stems but not for hacking away at big chunks of meat. Once in use they then had a positive influence on the development of the cuisine, ensuring that all ingredients remained bite-sized and therefore easily digestible.

Using chopsticks is an art that once acquired becomes a way of life. An accomplished eater can manage to clear every grain of rice from a bowl and pick up every type of food except for liquids. Studies have shown that using chopsticks involves eighteen joints and fifty muscles: even the physical eating experience in China is holistic. Chopsticks make a meal more satisfying, and make it impossible to bolt one’s food.

In the sixth century BC Confucius wrote that ‘
bu shi bu
shi’
. The word
shi
in Chinese has several meanings, depending on how it is written or pronounced, but in this case it means ‘time’ and ‘food’. Confucius meant here that ‘If the time is not appropriate you should not eat. ’ Of course, China does have its street and snack foods, but these generally offer healthy and freshly prepared savoury treats which are never regarded as a preferable alternative or even an adequate substitute for a real meal.

The harmony of Chinese cuisine is a reflexion of traditional Chinese culture. People may have different opinions, interests or attitudes but they come together at regular intervals and share the same food in a warm and positive atmosphere. The foods enjoyed at Chinese festivals symbolize unity. I have already described how families mark the advent of the New Year by wrapping
jiaozi
dumplings and how they enjoy the round
yuan
xiao
, stuffed rice flour balls, on the first full moon of the year. The other major festivals of the year are the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month and the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. All across China on these dates people enjoy the same foods. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated with
zongzi
, reed leafs stuffed with glutinous rice with a mixture of fillings that tend to be sweet in the north (Chinese dates or red bean paste) and savoury in the south (eggs and pork). In mid-autumn people enjoy ‘moon’ cakes filled with nuts, lotus seeds, bean paste and other delicacies, to celebrate the end of the harvest, the brightness of the moon at that time and the coming together of
yin
and
yang
. For in China, the sun personifies
yang
, the source of light and heat, while the moon is
yin
darkness and moisture; at the Moon Festival the two come together as summer heat gives way to autumn coolness.