Food Literature
Yichao Zhao
Food, an essential part of human culture, has been the theme of a huge amount of literatures. The authors used the most beautiful words and sentences to portray food. There are a lot of stories about food. Some people simply write descriptions of the good food in their opinions. For example, there is one very famous Chinese poet and scholar called Yuan Mei. He was born in 1716 and was a politician, but later he was disappointed by the bureaucratism and quit to live in the countryside. There, he wrote a lot of the most important works in his life. There is one book called Suiyuan Shidan (The food list of Suiyuan) which contains hundreds of entries of local food. Those descriptions are very brief, with 3 to 4 sentences, but the words he used are the most efficient and thus this book has a significant status in Chinese literature.
Although Yuan Mei’s work has great importance, I personally prefer another type of article about food. In this type of article, the author shares not only the physical features of the food, but also his personally experience and stories with the reader. It is more interesting to read these articles because as we read, we learn why the food is so important and sometimes the empathy touches us deep in our heart. In my Chinese class 6 years ago, we analyzed an article about salted duck eggs by Wang Zengqi. This article is almost mind blowing. I read it only three times, and I can still remember a lot it after 6 years. The main reason that I can remember is the salted duck egg is a very famous dish at the region near my hometown, and a lot of experiences Wang Zengqi mentioned in his article is shared by me.
There are lot of traditions shared by all the south-east part of China regarding food. In this article, Wang described the traditions related to the salted eggs. People from his town (and many other cities) start to make salted duck eggs before the dragon boat festival, therefore the salted egg become a very important dish for the dragon boat festival
Foodsion/April, 2014 50