Cultural Industry
Mary and I were in the market and were both hungry, but most of the things on offer to eat were scary, hence I declined and said I would wait until I got back home to eat. She suddenly said "Look they are selling fried potatoes on sticks, you can eat those, you love potatoes!" They had sprinkled sugar on them so I declined and protested "You can't put sugar on potatoes." Mary asked "Why not?" "Because you just can't" I said. "We can do anything, we are in China" she smiled at me. I told her "Look, England is the King of Potatoes and I am telling you, you cannot sugar on them." As usual her maddening reply was "But you are not in England now, you are in China."
My favourite food in the whole wide world is potatoes. When I went home last year one of the first things I bought was a 20kg bag of potatoes and I finished it within two weeks. My friends thought I was crazy because I ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was eating jacket potatoes at 7.00 a.m. - this is also not the done thing. Mary asked me "Why do you have so many rules about food?" I don't know, but as potatoes are probably the most basic and important food after bread in England, I still feel able to say what can and cannot be done with them. "I don't tell you how to cook rice or noodles, so don't tell me how to use potatoes" I told her. Some Korean friends gave me a mashed potato sandwich, it was a first for me, I never knew that this kind of sandwich existed, but all my Korean friends love mashed potato sandwiches. Whilst we are on this subject, why do Chinese people put sugar on tomatoes? I usually put vinegar on them.
A lot of my Chinese friends think that Western food is horrible, you know why? Because they don't know how to use or eat it. I was in a Western restaurant that does pretty nice food. There were some Chinese customers who ordered French fries and lots of sandwiches along with a pizza. ‘Too much bread and starch' I thought. Anyway the pizza sat there for a whole hour whilst the cheese and oil congealed. When they eventually started to eat it, they complained that it was horrible and that they didn't know why Westerners like pizza. I really wanted to shout at them "Of course it is horrible, it is stone cold". Speaking of pizzas, the flavours they have here are unknown in the West, sweet potato and pineapple, or taro (that purple vegetable that they put in everything), or how about fruit pizza? The Chinese idea of Western food is very strange, it is Western food Chinese style.
I ate at another Western restaurant and my friend ordered spaghetti bolognaise. They gave her a fork and a spoon but she wanted chopsticks. "This is a Western restaurant and this is not noodles it is spaghetti, we eat it with a fork and a spoon" I said. She replied "These are noodles, Italian noodles and eating them with chopsticks is better" she insisted.
England is also the Bread King and I don't like the bread here as a lot of it has sugar in - which makes it a cake in my mind. My friends don't seem to mind this and they think it is normal. In England the cheapest most basic bread is of the white sliced variety, I never eat it when I am there, instead I buy wholemeal granary bread with lots of seeds in, or tiger bread that we tear apart with our hands - bread heaven, if there is such a thing! Ok I am in China so I shouldn't expect to be able to buy the same things as I do at home, but what I am really trying to complain about is that the way my friends eat bread, this baffles me too. They eat it dry, no butter or anything else.
Sometimes when they come to meet me they bring me a loaf of bread and invite me to eat it there and then, I can't of course. Even more strange, if I buy a stick of French bread and don't eat it all at once, the next day when it is stale and rock hard, my flat mate eats it – dry of course. I don't know how she forces it down her throat. It always mesmerises me, she has to chew each mouthful about ten times before it is moist enough to swallow. I may have mentioned before that I brought back from England something called crumpets, which is a kind of round bread with holes in. We toast them and put butter or cheese on and it melts into the holes – absolutely amazing. However, my flatmate also sinned over this also, when I gave her some of my precious stock she just ate them as they were, without warming them up and without putting anything on them. I thought it was sacrilege and told her I wouldn't be wasting my precious goods on her anymore.
Whilst I am complaining about how they treat my precious stuff from England, I may as well tell you about what they did with the tea I brought back. I gave a box of English Breakfast Tea to a friend and she made a pot and offered me a cup. It was as weak as dishwater and so I asked her how she had made it. She had used one teabag for a full pot of tea for three people. Not only that, but she had also reserved the same teabag to be used again. When I challenged her she said it was because she didn't want to waste it. We always have one teabag for each person – and one for the pot.
My friends don't like Western food because it is expensive compared to Chinese food and they do not think it tastes good. When I try to tell them that many of the places here offering "Western food" are not actually offering the real deal, it falls on deaf ears. My friend said "Oatmeal is disgusting, I don't know why you people love it". When I questioned her about her cooking method I was able to ascertain that she did not in fact cook it, she just boiled the kettle and added boiling water to the oatmeal – can you imagine how bad that tasted?
Conversely, as far as my friends are concerned, I do not know how to eat Chinese food, both they and the waitresses always point out that I have ordered dishes that do not go together. Just for the record, Chinese people would like to know why we have fortune cookies given to us after a Chinese meal. They have never heard of this custom except in the West, hence this is a Western concept of Chinese food. Also, don't tell them, but we also murder Chinese food in our countries – fried seaweed? No such thing, it is just fried cabbage.
