EATING

 

“Eating rice”¹ is sometimes just like getting married. What is in name the most important thing often ends up being just a subsidiary consideration. When properly “eating rice” we in fact eat vegetable and meat dishes, just as when someone pursues the daughter of a rich old man, his primary object is not the girl! This type of lateral shift in perception involves a roundabout and rather complicated worldview. Savoring flavors rather than satisfying hunger becomes the real purpose of “eating rice” for us. The tongue replaces the belly as the ultimate or highest arbiter. Nevertheless, we persist in camouflaging enjoyment as need. We do not say we are “eating vegetable and meat dishes” but rather say we are “eating rice.”² It is like when we study philosophy or art, we always claim that the truth or beauty we find in them has utility. Things that have utility may, of course, be used by people for their benefit, and so be preserved and protected. Things without utility, conversely, find ways of using people to cover up or construct apologies for them so that they can avoid being discarded. Plato’s Republic divides the nation into three levels of people corresponding to the three components of the soul. The desires of the senses—hunger and thirst, eating and drinking—are the soul’s basest components, akin to the commoners or the masses in a political organization. The clever politician knows how to do just enough to satisfy the masses while dressing up his ambition as the will and welfare of the masses. Inviting a guest to a meal at a restaurant on the pretext of eating is an excuse the tongue makes to the stomach, as if to say, “Don’t complain, there’s something in it for you too! I do the work and you get the credit—what do I still owe you?” In fact, Heaven knows—a belly shrunken from hunger knows even better—that if filling the stomach is one’s sole purpose, tree bark and grass roots differ little from chicken, duck, fish, and pork! Who could have imagined that the humble biological processes of digestion and excretion would necessitate so much political maneuvering?

The Roman poet Persius³ once exclaimed that the belly was the “Master of Arts and Dispenser of Genius” (Magister artisingeni que largitor venter [sic]). Rabelais elaborated on this point in detail. Volume three [sic] of Gargantua and Pantagruel contains a chapter in praise of the belly, which it esteems as mankind’s true master, the originator and promoter of all manners of human knowledge and vocation. It goes so far as to say that the flying of birds, the running of animals, the swimming of fishes, the creeping of insects, and the hustle and bustle of all living things are “all for their innards” (et tout pour la tripe).⁴ All of man’s creations and activities (including essay writing) indicate not only the richness of the brain but also the emptiness of the stomach. A full stomach is good for nothing, and it turns the brain to jelly, making it good only for dreaming silly dreams. These two have an unwritten agreement, as powerfully evidenced by the postlunch siesta. We unfairly despise hunger, saying it produces only beggars, thieves, prostitutes, and the like, while forgetting that it has also inspired thought, skill, and the political and economic theory that “when there is food, it is for all to share.” In an earlier time, the German poet B. H. Brockes wrote a poetic encomium likening God to “a great chef” (der gross Speisemeister [sic]) who cooks food for all of humanity to eat, but this view inescapably betrays some religious childishness.⁵ The people who provide the food we eat are certainly not our true masters. No point in being that kind of God! Only those who have others to cook for them have the ability to control our actions. The master of the house, for instance, is not in fact the father who earns money to support the family but the newly weaned child sitting and eating contentedly. This fact, needless to say, goes unappreciated in childhood and is one that fathers would surely be unwilling to concede. Rabelais has a good point. Think about it: if the belly—to which we make offerings of tea and food from dawn to dusk—is not God, then what is it? In the final analysis, however, it is a lowly thing that only has the capacity to ingest and lacks enjoyment and appreciation. This is where life becomes complicated. On the one hand, there are people looking for food to fill their bellies, while on the other there are people who have food but lack appetite. The worldview of the first type of person might be called rice eating, while that of the second might well be called dish eating. The first type of person works, produces, and creates in exchange for food to eat. The second type uses the fruits of the first type’s activities to strengthen his disposition and whet his appetite, to help him eat and expand his eating capacity. Thus, it is not enough for us to have music when we eat—we must have “beauties” and “lovelies” to press us with wine.⁶ When we want to be even more refined we throw parties to pass the season or admire calligraphy and famous paintings at banquets. Even when admiring flowers or going on excursions to the mountains, we are treating famous scenic spots as accompaniments to our meal. Naturally, we insist that the dishes be the very finest. In an environment of such material abundance, the tongue imitates the body: once exceedingly wanton, it now becomes chaste and upright. Many things that it was used to eating it now absolutely refuses to allow to enter its mouth, as if eating them would sully its purity. One would expect that, being so meticulous, the tongue would eat less, but in fact it eats more. If the belly were the decision maker, it would have the propriety to stop when full. But the tongue wantonly selects the choicest and fattiest morsels for the greedy and reckless mouth. The stomach is consequently left to bear the burden and can only envy the mouth, while the tongue, as Lu Zhishen put it, “feels birdy bland.”⁷ Retribution for excessive greed! From this perspective, the dish-eating worldview seems a bit improper.

Tasty food is still to be celebrated, however. Man has thrown this world into confusion. Friction and conflict are everywhere. Only two harmonious things can be said to be man-made: music and cooking. A good dish of food is like a piece of music—a flavor of consistently varied and harmonious proportion whose opposing elements complement and complete each other, forming a composite in which they can be distinguished but not separated. The most pedestrian and superficial of examples include white-boiled crab and vinegar or roast duck and sweet sauce. Examples from Western cuisine include roast pork and apple sauce, or marinated cod and lemon slices. These things, which originally had nothing to do with the other, were fated to come together like matches made in Heaven or such well-paired couples as a beautiful woman and a talented scholar or a sow and a leprous boar.⁸ Once united, they can never be torn asunder. Some flavors have what Leibniz’s philosophy calls “preestablished harmony” (harmonia praestabilita).⁹ Others have preestablished incompatibility, such as pepper with boiled shrimp or crab, or sweet and sour sauce with stir-fried beef or lamb. Similarly, in ancient music the shang and jue tones are mutually inconsonant and zheng and yu do not match.¹⁰ As Confucius understood long ago, the principles of music accord with those of cooking. The Analects record that when Confucius was in the state of Qi and heard the Shao he “did not know the taste of meat for three months.”¹¹ Unfortunately, although the old gentleman exhibited a fair degree of culinary expertise in the “Xiang dang” chapter, before he had grasped the essence of the Way of Eating, he deviated from these two types of harmony toward music. In discussing how to cultivate mind and body in the Doctrine of the Mean, for example, he tries to develop the musical personality merely by saying that “when emotions are stirred and each exist in measured proportion, there ensues what might be called a state of Harmony.”¹² This truly is the talk of someone who appreciates music but doesn’t know the taste of meat. In our opinion, the perfect personality—“my Dao,” which “threads things together by a single means” to rule the perfect nation—not only needs to be as harmonious as music but should also elevate cooking to a harmonious ideal. On this point, rather than follow Confucius, we extol the forgotten Yi Yin, China’s first philosopher-chef. In his eyes, the human world could be likened to a kitchen where food is cooked. In the “Basic Flavors” chapter of Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals, Yi Yin’s discussion of the best way to flavor soup turns the greatest philosophy of governance into a mouthwatering cookbook. This idea seeped through political consciousness in ancient China, so that beginning with the chapter “On Fate” in the Book of Documents, being a prime minister was always likened to “stirring porridge in a pot.” Laozi also said that “governing the state is like cooking a small fish.”¹³ Mencius praised Yi Yin as “the capable sage” and Liu Xiahui as “the harmonious sage,” but here the order of the bamboo slips may have gotten mixed up.¹⁴ In fact, Liu Xiahui, who did nothing when naked women came before him, should be considered laissez-faire, while it is Yi Yin who deserves to be called “harmonious”—a “harmony,” of course, still imbued with connotations of cooking and balancing the five flavors.

Eating also has a number of social uses, such as forging interpersonal connections, talking business, and the like. This, in short, means “treating someone to a meal.” Although the various types of social eating are complex, in essence they are extremely simple. To feed someone who already has food to eat is to “treat someone to a meal.” To have food of one’s own but eat off someone else instead is to “bestow the honor of your presence.” These are the subtleties of social intercourse. Conversely, to feed someone who has nothing to eat is to “give a handout.” And should you have nothing to eat and go eat off someone else, what was “bestowing the honor of your presence” suddenly becomes “losing face.” This is charity, not social intercourse. As for how many guests you host or the proportion of men and women at the meal, we’ll leave such questions for another day. That said, the endlessly fascinating Almanach des gourmands¹⁵ contains a witty remark that must be raised here. Besides exploring eating, this precious and remarkable book also discusses the problem of treating others to a meal at one point in its eight volumes. It says, roughly, that after being treated to a meal, the number of days one should refrain from saying bad things about our host behind his back should be proportional to the quality of the food. Thus, to remain upstanding, one should treat others to eat as often as possible and make sure they eat well, so as to increase friends’ goodwill and lessen enemies’ slander. I introduce this array of opinions with utmost sincerity to all friends who would not become foes, and to all foes who would become friends. As for myself, while respectfully anticipating your invitations I firmly adhere to Zhu Bajie’s words to the little demons who serve the king of the Southern Mountain: “Don’t fight over me. Be patient and I’ll eat with each of you, one house at a time.”¹⁶