Written by | Editor of Dong Ziqi | Huang Yue In the last episode of Hua Shao’s interview program "See you at 9 o'clock tonight", Chen Xiaoqing, the interviewee and director of the food documentary, invited Hua Shao to a dinner with him.

Written by | Dong Ziqi

Edited by | Huang Yue

In the last episode of the interview program "See you at 9 o'clock tonight" by Hua Shao , the interviewee and food documentary director Chen Xiaoqing invited Hua Shao to a dinner with him. Another guest at the dinner was British writer Fuxia Dunlop, who is famous for the book " Shark Fin and Pepper ". After briefly comparing the differences between Chinese and Western food, Hua Shao said to Fuxia, "So we Chinese are still very proud of eating." Fuxia smiled and agreed without saying a word.

Half of the dinner party, Chen Xiaoqing quoted Deng Tuo's "History of Saving Famine in China" and said that the reason why Chinese people cherish bacon and fat is because the Chinese have the genes of famine. (The beginning of this book is such a passage, "From the 18th century BC to the 20th century today, nearly four thousand years, there were almost no disasters, and almost no famine; Western European scholars even called our country the 'country of famine'.") The director of the food documentary talked about eating at the dinner table, and what was actually about the famine consciousness in the bones of the Chinese. What is more interesting is that this passage seems to be the opposite of what Mr. Hua said earlier to Fuxia, "The Chinese are still very proud of eating."

In the show, Fu Xia seemed to be a foreigner who had a great liking for Chinese food. She happily responded to Chen Xiaoqing and Hua Shao’s comments on Chinese food, and was praised by Chen Xiaoqing as “eating everything”. What adds a harmonious atmosphere to the dinner party is a joke she made because of the food. The joke is like this: She once followed her friend to rural Hunan and sat in her friend's car. She kept hearing frogs croaking in the trunk of the car. She endured it all the way and finally asked her friend with a good food literacy, how should frogs eat, whether they are dried or tasted? A friend told her that the frog was bought and released by another friend, and it was not a specially prepared ingredient - this joke seemed to symbolize her tolerance for the Chinese people's eating habits of "eat everything" and her familiarity with Chinese culinary arts. In Chen Xiaoqing's words, it is "more Chinese than Chinese", and by the way it also responded to what Mr. Hua said about Chinese people's pride in eating.

However, if the audience has read "Shaw Fin and Pepper" written by Fuxia, they will understand that Fuxia's attitude towards the Chinese people's food pride and eating everything is complicated. She has spent a lot of time in the book to tell her dietary experience in China like a crazy adventure, and analyzed that the Chinese people's pride in eating is cowardly. She believes that perhaps the Chinese 5 people have realized that behind their pride in eating is "hedonism and universal self-indulgence", and half-jokingly immersing the Chinese people in eating is the reason why China is backward and beaten. Her performance at the dinner seemed to be politely concealed this slightly sarcastic attitude, but she did not really remove this attitude from communication. After all, the eating habit of "eating everything" - such as eating frogs - is not something that everyone agrees in China.

This international dinner consisted of Hua Shao, Chen Xiaoqing and Fuxia, which concentrated on the seemingly divided Chinese people's attitudes towards eating - on the one hand, they are proud of externally, and on the other hand, they admit that there is a famine gene in their bones. Why is this so? What are people proud of? What is hungry? We can find clues in more texts.

Famine: Alternative food, Alternative happiness

The conclusion proposed by Chen Xiaoqing - "The Chinese have the gene of famine in their bones" - can be confirmed by his own narration in this interview program. He told the story of a middle school classmate: That classmate only had enough money to buy a steamed bun. In order to eat better, he broke the steamed buns apart and digged the lard from the canteen to cook and applied it to the boiled steamed buns. Chen Xiaoqing said that he could smell the lard smell until now. Although it is a memory of other people's experiences, Chen Xiaoqing himself undoubtedly has a strong sense of immersion, as if the hunger he is, the more halo the hard-earned food he is in hunger. Similar to his story, there are also a series of works set in the era of famine.

In the theoretical monograph "The Disciplined Narrative", which studies the narrative problem of novels on the theme of agricultural cooperatives in China for 17 years, researcher Lin Ting wrote that a group of literary works written during the famine (such as Lu Bing's "Auntie Li", Han Wenzhou "County Mayor Hu Genqun" and Chen Canyun's "Holiday") all reveal an extraordinary enthusiasm for eating. Although the novel does not directly write about the situation of famine, it will explain in detail what each meal was eaten in the story. Some will also actively praise some people with superb skills, such as the ability of girls in public canteens to pick wild vegetables and steam vegetarian buns and replace sugar with mountain cotton jujubes, just like a clever woman completing a "cook without rice" (Gao Hong's "Girl in the Canteen"). Researchers believe that the author's enthusiasm for food reflects the "author's hungry stomach replaced the pen dominated by the brain" during the famine period, just like an unexpected leak in depression. But in general, the way of presenting famine at that time was not to directly write about suffering, but to make up for the shortage of actual life in a positive and praising way.

On the one hand, literary works that write the famine era are generally filled with excitement and positive emotions; on the other hand, people who have actually experienced that era have different observations and emotions. Ding Fan recalled the famine experience of going to the countryside in northern Jiangsu in 2017. The way people he saw in dealing with hunger was not uniquely skilled in transforming food, but the disgraceful "robbery" and "stealing" - what's more sad is that the objects of "robbery" and "stealing" are all wild vegetables. He witnessed a storm of secretly picking alfalfa (commonly known as grass head): people put alfalfa in cotton jackets and trousers and took it home with alfalfa to cook vegetable porridge. As a result, after eating the vegetable porridge for a few days, the whole community was hungry and weak. Compared to the literary and elegant interest of Wang Zengqi or Zhou Zuoren's embrace of wild vegetables, he feels more bored and fearful about wild vegetables; when he recalls the situation of eating wild vegetables back then, there will be sour water in his mouth. But similar to the way of writing food enthusiastically in that era, Ding Fan also wrote in detail about the way to make certain wild vegetables. For example, wild shepherd's purse can also be treated after some treatment (the recipe for wild shepherd's purse written by Ding Fan is blanched in boiling water, cut into coarse powder, salt and sugar, and drizzled in sesame oil) and becomes a "delicious dish" in the hungry era - more precisely, it can become a substitute for a "delicious dish" in an era when even food is scarce.

Alternative foods and alternative delicacies have also been entrusted with great enthusiasm in the era of famine, which has made people use all means, even by "stealing" and "robbing". In addition, there is another alternative way to talk about food and painting cakes to satisfy your hunger. Lu Wenfu 's novel "Gourmet" has written that during the "Great Leap Forward" and "Difficult Year", the protagonist "I" and the gourmet are too hungry. The gourmet borrowed "My" pumpkins to satisfy their hunger (this is also a food substitution, a "melon and vegetable generation"), and even talked about eating with "I" like a cake to satisfy their hunger. The foodie said that because there is nothing to eat or drink during these days and can’t sleep at night, I remember the good things I have eaten in my life. He had a very good memory of what he ate, and could remember the famous dishes he ate decades ago - where he ate, who cooked them, what he tasted like, and what the aftertaste was... Compared with the superb canteen girl, the foodie was undoubtedly more artistic and imaginative. He directly bypassed the actual operation, imagined how to eat pumpkin in his mind, and encouraged people who were deeply trapped in hunger with various fictional eating methods.

pride: The diverse surface of food documentaries is closely related to the single core

Food and family warmth, which is also the content that food documentaries have focused on portraying in recent years. From "Chinese on the Tip of the Tongue" to " Flavor of the World ", most of the food collection and food production clips are from family units, and only a few stories are based on individual clues. The film constantly emphasizes the food skills shared by family (generations) members in a certain place in China. For example, in "Dip of the Tongue", the mother and daughter collect matsutake together, the father and son can also pickle ham, and the brothers dig lotus root together.At the level of family collaboration and co-production of food, the documentary also shows the close relationship between food and family relationships.

On the one hand, the documentary will use New Year's Day reunion and marriage as the entry point to show the scene of family reunion and sharing of delicious food, especially the close-up of the older generation preparing for reunion during the New Year; on the other hand, this type of image does not forget to emphasize the eating customs of Chinese people during the traditional festival, how to gather and eat, for example, Chinese people should reunite with their families to eat dumplings during the New Year. It is worth noting that at this time, food documentaries have already overflowed the scope of food observation and have become a narrative of how Chinese family life should be prescriptive rather than descriptive. For example, when stating that Chinese people want to eat dumplings during the Chinese New Year, the voiceover also claimed that China is the group that attaches the most importance to family in the world. In the story of the integration of family and food, this type of documentary is also constantly consolidating the Chinese-style family and human relations.

Human relationships are reflected in the division of labor when making food. For example, the division of labor between the eldest daughter-in-law and the second daughter-in-law is different, and they must be carried out under the mother-in-law's dispatch. It is also reflected in the different rankings of the family when enjoying food, that is, it must conform to the order of the seniority and the seniority of China. For example, regarding the order of seating for the tables of four generations living together, the commentary of "The Bite of the Tongue" is as follows: "Four generations living together are reunited for a good harvest. Although it is the most ordinary home-cooked meal, the order and orientation of seating should be paid attention to. Grandpa is 90 years old and does farm work all his life. The seat opposite the gate of the courtyard should be left for him. This is the order of the old and young people in traditional China. Eating the food they grow, the family feels down-to-earth because of their hard work."

"The Bite of the Tongue" and "Flavor" series emphasize the fusion of food and family human relations and mutual enhancement, which may be related to Chen Xiaoqing's own concept. In an interview with the Beijing News, he repeatedly expressed his nostalgia for simple family food. When he was feeling uncomfortable, what he wanted most was the white porridge and pickles made by his mother. In fact, his nostalgia is also in line with the documentary's focus. For example, a film about the life of a young man in the city focuses on how his son eats outside, but how his mother carefully prepares dinner and waits for his son to return; there are also clips that reflect the monotonous life in the factory, and the focus is not on the canteen food in the factory, but on the family food atmosphere that the couple strives to create at their homes in the dormitory building. These clips of

constantly emphasize that the handmade production of family members is warm and cannot be copied by assembly line. It can be said that compared to "flavor", these food series documentaries pay more attention to the subsequent "world". By constantly repeating the description that mother's dishes are the best, everyone misses the taste of the home, and family production is irreplaceable, the relationship between family characters is also fixed in the norms of traditional Chinese families, and to some extent, cooking and cooking into the functions of family roles such as mother-in-law, mother, and housewife (some people in the documentary are called a mother-in-law, and the dishes she cooks are called "mother-in-law's dishes"). Even when the children re-form a small family and want to leave their original family, food is still a bond that binds human relations. There is a story like this: a pregnant woman was about to give birth, and both parents came to the small family and started a competition for their respective local dishes in the kitchen. The commentary is as follows: "It is not so much that it shows the cooking skills of the elderly throughout their lives, but rather that it expresses the joy of welcoming a new life." This is actually very clear that the contribution of food to the pregnant woman by both parents is not to dote on their daughter or daughter-in-law, but out of expectations for a new life, and the new life is of course the continuation of human relations between the two families.

If food is bound to the family, it will definitely be connected to the place where the home is located, reflecting the "adaptation to local conditions" and local colors of different regions in China, and guides the narrative of food documentaries like guiding ideas. "China on the Bite of the Tongue" and "Flavor of the World" both praise China for its vast and diverse geography and rich natural resources, and both transform this praise of "nature" into a compliment for the rich ingredients of China and the diversity of food handled by the Chinese.In the narrative of the documentary, natural landscapes and geographical climates are directly converted into food raw materials and ways to process food raw materials, that is, they provide many possibilities of "eatable" and "how to eat".

not only has the overall guidance idea, but these documentaries also highly bind the food to the location when they tell the details of the food in episodes. The unique treasures of each place are called "elf-like food", "delicious food hidden in the mountains", and "extreme delicious food from the mountains and forests". The first episode of "China on the Bite of the Tongue" talks about how the matsutake mushroom of Shangri-La in Yunnan - called a "high-end ingredient" - is collected and cooked hard. The protagonist of the story of Matsutake is a girl. Her motivation for collecting Matsutake is impressive. She said to the camera, "If you don't come out, others will pull out all (Matsutake). " "When I saw that others pick more than me, I was still quite panicked." It is worth adding that Tibetan writer Alai wrote a story called " Mushroom Circle ", which tells the tragedy caused by locals who desperately collect Matsutake regardless of the growth rules of Matsutake. In "The Tip of the Tongue", this girl who worked hard to collect Matsutake may be a villain if she was in this novel.

found completely different foods in different places, and this guiding idea for recording food is still continuing. After "Flavor World", Chen Xiaoqing also has "Flavor Origin" with Chaoshan and Yunnan as the main characters. It is said that there will be a "Flavor + City" series afterwards. During the interview, Chen Xiaoqing also told Hua Shao that people from all over the country would send their own food to his studio. In other words, they were almost looking for food among the people, just like "lost rituals", and also received a keen response from the "people".

However, if you go back to the family and human relations issues mentioned earlier, it is not difficult to find that compared with the vast and diverse landforms, resources and food, the family stories and values ​​presented in these documentaries are highly uniform. It seems that no matter whether you are in the south or north, east or west, countryside or city, you are all in the same set of hometown stories, and you all have the same homesickness - you are all homesick as if you are in the New Year, and you are always reunited at the dinner table and are always happy. Although the food stories of those who are truly wandering are mentioned, such as factory youth and first-tier cities drifting youth, they are generally in the shadows and are used to set off the beautiful lives of people in the warmth of their families; even in Shenzhen without homesickness, the documentary has found local indigenous people as the object of observation - this may also reveal the contradictions of such food documentaries: under the surface of diversity and richness, there is a monotonous narrative that constantly repetition and strengthening. Behind the family food carnival is the frustration and loss of being unable to return home.

Lost: Controversy between Zhongming Ding Food and Takeout

Compared with the "folk" flavors in the food documentary searching for Zhuye, Wang Xuanyi's "State Banquet and Family Banquet" has a more "court" meaning. The banquets recorded in the book not only have the warmth of ordinary families, but also symbolize the past glory of Zhongming Ding Food Home. She wrote that her mother, born in a noble family, was good at cooking family banquets. In the 1940s, her mother hosted many guests at home all year round, and these banquets were divided into "family banquets" and "state banquets": the former was a gathering of relatives and friends, and the latter was a formal banquet for her father's friends. At these banquets, my mother used Hangzhou dishes as the base, mixed other Jiangsu and Zhejiang dishes, and added Shanghai-style Western cuisine. My mother has many specialties that are expensive and terrifying, such as stewed river eel, red stewed sea cucumber and honey sauce ham.

If compared with the "Melon Field Age" in the famine era mentioned earlier, or the mountain delicacies and family productions of the "Tip of the Tongue" series, these dishes do seem very luxurious. The author obviously also realized this luxury and talked about the genealogy and inheritance of these dishes. She classified her mother's cuisine as "graceful and deep" Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine, praising her mother's food for her compliance with the rules, and was also proud of her mother's meticulous eating habits.Interestingly, this rule and meticulousness are undoubtedly a habit cultivated by aristocratic families, or as the author says, it is a taste passed down from generation to generation. The author repeatedly compared his mother's food with " Dream of Red Mansions " - describing his mother's life as if it were "Dream of Red Mansions", and his cooking concept was like the "eggplant" in "Dream of Red Mansions" (Reporter's note: "Dream of Red Mansions" uses the plot of Liu Laolao as an outsider's as a scene for eating eggplant by outsiders, showing the complex and meticulous cooking procedures of the Jia family), and exaggeratedly compared her mother and aunt to the "People's Pea" family, and mentioned that under the training and influence of her mother, she was able to identify the extensive and irregular cooking of other restaurants in selecting ingredients. Through the family dinner, her mother is not so much teaching her children how to prepare meals, but rather raising their children's taste and art of food. Although this kind of nostalgic and lost feeling for the former Zhongming Ding Food House - may be unfamiliar with those who have experienced famine as before - faces many difficulties in reality.

In Wang Xuanyi's opinion, the restaurant's creative fusion dishes are no longer in line with the requirements of the art of food and beverages, nor are they within the course of any kind of delicacies. She wrote that many creative fusion dishes now have problems, because the so-called innovation and change have destroyed the original cuisine. "A dish has been practiced by so many people for generations, and what it presents must be unique. To ruin its flow and break its body, it must be quite reasonable." Similar to this observation, Ding Fan also feels that many specialty foods have now lost their original taste, but his reasons are different from breaking "rules" and "genealogy". He believes that the reason why specialty foods disappear is commercialization, standardization and unscrupulous profit-seeking of merchants. It is precisely because many businesses always "substantially use inferior products as good ones", "cut corners", "simple production", etc., that people love the films in the "Tips of the Tongue" series, because there are real materials, warm and not so standardized folk delicacies that embody family human ethics.

, one lacks genealogy and rules, and the other is too commercial and standardized. These are all criticisms of contemporary food by gourmets. From this idea, it is not difficult to understand their disgust for takeaway today. Chen Xiaoqing once clearly opposed takeaway. In an exclusive interview with the Beijing News, he said that he did not want to use takeaway to deceive his stomach when he was hungry. He hoped that takeaway would disappear, and eating takeaway for a long time always had to pay a price; food writer Wang Kai also opposed takeaway in the podcast program "Leftover Value" - the reasons they opposed takeaway include the single ingredients not limited to takeaway, doubts about freshness, lack of nutrition, and the unfavorable environmental protection of packaging materials. But if we continue the analysis just now, we may be able to infer that the more important reason why gourmets oppose takeout is that takeout lacks the warmth of home production and no recipe line, and has no connection with the art of food and beverage. Open the takeaway app, grilled skewers, malatang, braised chicken, and rouxia are almost the sum of the production of creative dishes, standardized and commercialized foods. In other words, among the standards of gourmets, it is the worst sum.

The problem is that if the wild vegetables stolen from the famine can be made into exciting delicacies, if the steamed buns with lard are still missing, how can the takeaway with grease not even "deceiving your appetite"? So for the huge number of people who are rushing around in the city all day long, how should we seek "no cost" food? After all, not everyone can let their mother spend most of their day cooking and waiting at home, and not every family has the past of bells and tripods and state banquets that can be traced back. No matter how warm and lively the New Year’s Day reunion dinner is, it can only be once a year; the family dinner with four generations living together is not an eternal and perfect ending, it is just a transitional state. How to solve the problem of modern people eating? Perhaps what we should expect is more nutritious, delicious and healthy takeaway food, rather than returning to your mother again - and why does her mother always stay where she cooks for you?

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