Discussion Friday

[geraineon]

It's time for Discussion Friday again~!

I woke up really hungry so in my quest to make everyone as hungry as I am, we're going to talk about food.

Does reading make you hungry? Have you read a particular good description of food or cooking in a c-novel* that made you salivate? Or perhaps you've read something that sounds absolutely atrocious (which makes you want to try it for Science). Did anything you read inspire you to cook, or seek that dish out?

Share them and let's make everyone hungry!

*feel free to very loosely interpret c-novel here for Discussion Friday, e.g., Chinese web-novels, Chinese novels, Chinese novellas/short stories, other language novels translated into Chinese, novels by Chinese (nationality or diaspora) published in non-Chinese language

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

Here’s another example of different and unrelated cultures arriving at the same custom, with the same symbolism, for the same reason—by entirely different routes!

As You Know, Bob (and this presumptuous Westerner welcomes corrections), there’s a Chinese practice of eating some sort of leafy green vegetable for New Year’s: the word 菜 (cai ³ (Cantonese) or cai⁴ (Mandarin) being a play upon the word 財 (coi⁴ (Cantonese) or cai² (Mandarin), denoting wealth; that’s also why Lunar New Year parade lions contend over a bale of cabbage—unless they’re using real money as the prize.

However! A lot of Afro- and Euro-diasporic Americans also make a point of eating auspicious green vegetables—cabbage, fresh or as sauerkraut, kale, and collards are popular choices—because the green color evokes U.S. paper currency!

[geraineon]

XDD That's amusing.

There's another, related to symbolism. The pineapple! It's called "wong lai" in Malaysian Cantonese, which sounds like inviting fortune to come (I think it's similar in Hokkien too), so you'll see a lot of pineapples during New Year.

I learnt sometime this year that pineapples are a symbol of wealth in Europe because it was exotic and rare (and apparently often displayed rather than eaten).

[full_metal_ox]

I learnt sometime this year that pineapples are a symbol of wealth in Europe because it was exotic and rare (and apparently often displayed rather than eaten).

And in the U.S. as well, which is why you see the pineapple as a decorative motif in colonial and Victorian decor, in things like furniture posts and fabric design; it connoted wealth and cosmopolitanism, whether or not you had access to the actual fruit.

[geraineon]

Really interesting how things like these can sometimes converge!

21st-century Posh Pineapple sighting!

[full_metal_ox]

In an upper-middle-class home on the Gulf Coast of Florida:

Re: 21st-century Posh Pineapple sighting!

[geraineon]

What a fancy pineapple XD