Such Barbarians

We left Xian behind by boarding a train crammed full of people eating, drinking, and card-playing—all of it loudly. Nicole was scandalized by the fact that her bunk had been previously occupied by someone who had left it littered with food and hair.

This brings up the inevitable discussion of difference in manners between ourselves and our fellow travel companions. There are many culturally determined things about the Chinese, which by dumb luck play exactly into our notions of dreadful manners. And, we suppose, vice versa. One of these is bedding. Americans simply do not sleep in others' beds. Even on an airplane, we demand a clean blanket and pillow.

Another is eating. Where the westerner sits primly, mouth clamped shut, chewing impassively, the Chinese picks up a bowl, sets it an inch from his face and slurps and shovels its contents into his mouth, smacking his lips with joy. If he (or she) encounters, say, a chicken bone, it is sucked clean of its contents, which are then tongue-sorted into edible and inedible portions, one in each cheek. The former is ingested, the latter expectorated into one's hand and thrown onto the table.

I know this is all arbitrary stuff, totally unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Why should we, in eating, make such a Stoic go of it? We sit down to a bowl of steaming lobster bisque, which we should, by all rights, grasp with both hands and slurp down in a frenzy of unbridled gastronomic glee. But what do we do instead? We pick up a spoon and scoop up infinitesimal portions of it, with our faces betraying no more emotion than if we were taking down a plate of prison chow. Except that we say--usually in a hushed tone--"This is very good."

And presumably, we do hundreds of thing that the Chinese find beastly. We often find them looking at us with a "what the hell are you doing" stare. And we return the favor.

In any case, we began our train trip by giving in to our cultural norms and unrolling yoga mats on our (to us) filthy beds. We awoke in Sichuan to a different countryside, a hilly, riparian landscape marked by wheat fields with neat sheaves stacked up and drying. There were vegetable gardens, rice paddies, farmhouses—and, yes, the occasional smoke-belching, coal-fired power plant. It is still China, after all.

Now we have arrived in Chengdu, in the heart of Sichuan. It's actually the famous Szechuan of American Chinese restaurant lingo. And justly so. Food in China, though all eaten with chopsticks, varies greatly. We found Xian's love affair with star anise a little overpowering, but here the main event is the pepper, and we are happy. Much of the food is also served on a steaming cast iron platter, which does things for bacon that are indescribably delicious. Nicole and I have been doing our best to brush aside cultural norms and get down to some good, honest, Chinese slurping. We'll let you know how it goes.