China Popular Itineraries |
|
|
|
|
2.8 The Varieties of Dietetic Culture |
The dietetic culture is classified into four basic types:
(1) Household Dietetic Customs: they are popular in people's daily life mainly including the frequency and timings of daily meals, seat arrangement and dining orders, the adjustment and alteration of food structure in four sea-sons, the entertainment to guests and special household dining habits.
(2) Holiday Dietetic Customs: they are the richest custom with the most striking folk characteristics, distinctive with features of different times, re-gions, nationalities and holidays. There is special food for particular holidays. For instance, Yuanxiao (glutinous rice dumpling in soup) is connectted with the Lantern Festival; Fried beans for Feb. 2"d(lunar calendar); Zongzi for the Dragon Boat Festival; mooncake for the Mid-Autumn Festival; Chrysan-themum wine for Double Nine Festival; congee for Dec. 8th; jiaozi and New Year cake for the Spring Festival Eve. Many holiday food has special implica-tions. For example, Yuanxiao on the Lantern Festival and mooncake on the Mid-Autumn Festival symbolize family reunion; jiaozi on New Year's Eve are called Shousui jiaozi (shousui, means staying up late all night on New Year's Eve; jiaozi, means mid-night when the new year comes and the 01d year passes). New year cakes symbolize making progress each year (cake, called gaodian in Chinese is homonyms of progress in Chinese). In rural ar-eas, people used to stuff candy or coins into jiaozi, symbolizing happiness and fortune in the coming year; Zongzi is eaten on the Dragon Boat Festival in commemoration of Qu Yuan, patriotic poet in ancient China.
With the development of special food for holidays, special rules appeared for holiday food. For instance, the northerners usually eat jiaozi on New Year' s Eve because it looks like gold ingots used as money in feudal China and symbolizes fortune. However, if some jiaozi break while being boiled, people should not say "break" or anything like that, they should say "smile. " If a whole pot of jiaozi were broken, people can only say "All of them are smil-ing."
(3) Dietetic Belief Customs: they are dietetic customs determined by per- sacrifice and taboos. Sacrifice is an offering of food to God or ghosts. For ex-ample, the custom of grave-visiting honors the belief in afterworld life as well as the memory of the dead. However, so far as belief in afterworld life is con-cerned, sacrifice seems contradictory. On the one hand, spirits do not eat earthly food; on the other hand, people offer earthly food to please them to show filial piety. The result is that the food in the name of sacrifice is finally consumed by the living people. That is to say, the so-called spirits-pleasing is actually pleasing the living people.
Dietetic taboos are rather complicated. Some are from religious belief, others are from summaries of living experience. For instance: Uigur and Kazak nationalities forbid pork-eating, which is connectted with Islam -- be-cause Islam regards pig as a dirty animal; Manchus never kill dogs, a belief handed down from ancestors -- It was recorded in Manchu history that a yel-low dog saved the life of their ancestor. There are also various dietetic taboos on women in pregnancy. For example: hare-eating will lead to harelip; gin-ger-eating will result in surplus fingers; tortoise-eating will lead to short neck; while sparrow-eating or wine-drinking will result in lascivious offspring. Of all these few were from experience, and most of them are groundless.
(4) Ritual Dietetic Customs: they are not based on physiological needs, but rather, on social needs. Banquet is the most representive one.
Banquet, different from daily meals, has certain rites. It is an important traditional collective-dining activity, and divided into "formal banquet" and "private banquet". Any banquet held on public occasions with complicated rites is a formal banquet, such as state banquet; family banquets such as wed-ding banquets, birthday banquets, personal welcome banquets or farewell ban-quets are all private banquets. Whenever there is a banquet, there is a host.
Banquets, formal or private, are ideal occasions for making friends, con-ducting deals, building relation network and friendship; for other social activi-ties as well, apart from enjoying delicacies.
|
|
