Ernie Tadla

食糧はすべての文化で重要であるが、中国で、表面およびguanxiのための用具として優先する役割を担う。

ビジネス食べることはguanxiが確立されるところである。 もう一人の人を知り、一緒に食べる信頼を造ることを得ることは必要である。 中国人は彼らの机で食べないし、最も近いファーストフードの売店に急がない。 それは話し、他の人と知り合いになることのための特定時である。 通常、ビジネスは論議されない。 それは多くの営業会議の間にされる。

ビジネス宴会はguanxiの建物の小尖塔であり、祝いかまたはゲストに名誉を与える。

私達はたくさん(で都市の20,000,000)の二階の巨大な、華やかに設計されていた中国のレストランの1つで、通常集まる。 耳の無線芽を搭載する礼儀正しく、友好的で、幸せなスタッフは、あなたのテーブルか私用部屋、豪華見る甘美かぐ食糧に、ウエーターおよびウェートレスが高価の版によって急ぐ間、指示した。

中国の宴会はただの料理用の饗宴および経験である; それは視覚および聴覚の経験である。 それは最も陰謀的な項目の7つから8つの冷たい前菜から始まる。 それは12から15の熱いコースに先行している: 私達がそれらを知っているように)ビーフ、ポーク、鶏、アヒル、2は(入口で水漕から選ばれ、テーブルの側面で点検され、そして承認されて)、および各種各様の野菜(冷たいサラダ無し採取する。 私はサラダを愛し、私の専有物を家庭で作った。 My Chinese father-in-law used to laugh and call me, in Chinese, a grass eater. The huge lazy-Susan platform keeps rotating, and you pick up these juicy, tasty morsels with your chopsticks as they go by. Usually two kinds of soups and rice are served near the end of the meal. When they serve the watermelon, you know the meal is over. There is no happy hour, no cocktail before dinner, mostly orange juice though and no lingering over a cigar and liqueur. After the watermelon, you get up and go.

I attended many banquets, but one, as the guest of the chairman of Jia Ling Motorcycles, was more memorable than the rest. Jia Ling produced more than one million motorcycles a year plus over one and a half million motorcycle engines for other manufacturers. DMG was staging a large international exhibition for Jai Ling in Chongqing in Sichuan Province. We planned it as a Las Vegas style event: strobe lights, large overhead movie screens, blasting music, and many gorgeous, leggy ladies.

We were mobbed. The mayor, who heard of our sound and light show, couldn’t get near our area. The press of the people damaged the stands and the grounds and caused us problems with the building management. We ran out of literature. For a guy from North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada, it was an amazing spectacle to be at the center of.

On the last evening, the Jia Ling chairman staged a banquet for DMG’s senior people. Protocol stipulates that the most senior person from each company sit together at the head of the round table with the rest sitting in descending order. As group general manager, I sat next to the chairman. Business dining is a ritualistic affair based on guanxi and face.

A row of drinking glasses was placed in front of me ― for water, beer, wine, and maotai. Maotai is made from wheat and sorghum and has an alcohol content of 55 per cent. It is a clear, white liquid and you drink it from small, shot-type glasses. Clearly from some foreigners, like me a lethal drink. Chairman Mao served maotai at state dinners during Richard Nixon’s state visit to China. I’d had maotai before and it was awful, had a nasty aftertaste and didn’t agree with my body. The waiter filled the chairman’s glass and then mine. I was crushed with cultural and male, macho pressure.

I wanted to match my honored host, not lose face with my Chinese managers and be one of the boys. So when the chairman toasted us and downed his maotai, we all drank. As soon as the stuff hit my system, I knew that if it continued, and it does, my concern would not be about losing face, but losing it all. I had a choice: drink another maotai and get sick there or rush to the washroom, or put my hand over the glass as the waiter started to fill it. I could hold my own with the beer and red wine, but I couldn’t handle the maotai.

I put my hand over the empty glass.
 
The second, the very second, the chairman observed my action, he ordered everyone’s maotai glasses removed from the table. This was his way of showing me respect and saving my face. If I didn’t drink maotai, no one would. In actual fact, I felt I had lost face because my behavior had affected the drinking enjoyment of everyone else. They loved maotais and company banquets were some of the few times they could enjoy them. But that was a Western reaction. The Chinese are non-judgmental and acritical. So we never skipped a beat, drank red wine and beer and continued with the party. No fuss, no embarrassment, just Confucian face saving.
 
In the excellent book, Nixon in China: The Week That Changed the World, Margaret MacMillian detailed the former U.S. president’s encounter with maotais. Future secretary of State, Alexander Haig, having witnessed Nixon’s slight tolerance for alcohol and having experienced the potent Chinese maotai himself, warned in a top-secret cable,
“UNDER NO, REPEAT, NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD THE PRESIDENT ACTUALLY DRINK FROM HIS GLASS IN RESPONSE TO BANQUET TOASTS.”

The common greeting in China is “Have you eaten yet?” When I first arrived, I was perplexed by this question and hesitated before answering because I didn’t know if they were inviting me to eat with them. I was still uncomfortable about eating with a Chinese person that I didn’t know well.

Here, on this side of the water, when you meet someone you ask, “How are you?” It’s a greeting. You don’t want to know about their lower back pain or whether their boss is a pain farther down. You’re supposed to reply, “I’m fine, thank you.”
 
In China, “Have you eaten yet?” is also just a greeting. You’re supposed to answer, “Yes, I have eaten.” If you have eaten, you are fine. In China, with its turbulent past and a billion plus, there were times when many people did go hungry. Millions died of starvation during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. So, “Have you eaten yet?” does have its roots in the significance of real food shortages and not being able to eat.

Ordinary family meals, with four to five cold appetizer dishes followed by eight to ten courses, are eaten around a round table. Those meals, with everyone taking food from communal plates, are always a happy time. This certainly creates a warm, family celebration atmosphere for every meal, not just for special occasions. The noises, the smells, the sights, the constant chatter, are happy family times.

In the West, the largest portion of household expenses goes to the upkeep of spacious houses. In China, the largest expenditure is food, eating and going out for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinners, with family, relatives and friends. The seeds of guanxi are planted and nurtured at these meals.

The Chinese are opened-minded about eating all sorts of things that we would gag on. In Southern China, in the Guangzhou area markets, you can buy dog and cat meat for dinner.

During a business luncheon one day, the waiter brought a burlap bag to the table and our host looked into it and nodded. I had seen the waiter bring us live fish from the tanks for approval, so I wondered why they put the fish in a burlap bag. It wasn’t a fish, it was a live snake. I ate snake for lunch that day. I’ve eaten roasted cockroaches and duck tongues.

I could handle these, but not maotai? Here is how I managed it. I told myself, “Ern, it’s all in your mind. Your body recognizes this only as protein. To your digestive system, it isn’t snake or cockroach. It’s just protein. It’s your mind that messes it up.” Maotai was not mental, it was physical. My body rejected it, but not protein.

Don’t let these little side experiences taint your impression of Chinese food and cooking. It’s wonderful. The myriad ways they prepare all the dishes is fantastic: the tastes, the colors, and the presentation. Eating in China is a wonderful experience.
 
The amazing thing is that you never see fat Chinese people. On the city streets you are beginning to see more and more fat Chinese children as McDonald’s, KFC, and other fast-food restaurants, make their presence felt in every city.

The Chinese drink copious amounts of green tea, which constantly flushes fats from their system. An ingredient in green tea joins with fat, makes it water soluble, and so it goes.

Ernie Tadla, www.odysseychina.net

Next week:
• Living in a Chinese Family
• Accidents Happen
• Chinese Education
• Sex in Shanghai.