China Learn

China Zodiac On having a Stomach

One of the most important consequences of our being animals is that we have got this bottomless pit called the stomach. This fact has colored our entire civilization. The Chinese epicure Li Liweng wrote a complaint about our having this bottomless pit, in the prefatory note to the section on food in his book on the general art of living.

I see that the organs of the human body, the ear, the eye, the nose, the tongue, the hands, the feet and the body, have all a necessary function, but the two organs which are totally unnecessary but with which we are nevertheless endowed are the mouth and the stomach, which cause all the worry and trouble of mankind throughout the ages. With this mouth and this stomach, the matter of getting a living becomes complicated, and when the matter of getting a living becomes complicated, we have cunning and falsehood and dishonesty in human affairs. With the coming of cunning and falsehood and dishonesty in human affairs, comes the criminal law, so that the king is not able to protect with his mercy, the parents are not able to gratify their love, and even the kind Creator is forced to go against His will. All this comes of a little lack of forethought in His design for the human body at the time of the creation, and is the consequence of our having these two organs. The plants can live without a mouth and a stomach, and the rocks and the soil have their being without any nourishment. Why, then, must we be given a mouth and a stomach and endowed with these two extra organs? And even if we were to be endowed with these organs, He could have made it possible for us to derive our nourishment as the fish and shell fish derive theirs from water, or the cricket and the cicada from the dew, who all are able to obtain their growth and energy this way and swim or fly or jump or sing. Had it been like this, we should not have to struggle in this life and the sorrows of mankind would have disappeared. On the other hand, He has given us not only these two organs, but has also endowed us with manifold appetites or desires, besides making the pit bottomless, so that it is like a valley or a sea that can never be filled. The consequence is that we labor in our life with all the energy of the other organs, in order to supply inadequately the needs of these two. I have thought over this matter over and over again, and cannot help blaming the Creator for it. I know, of course, that He must have repented of His mistake also, but simply feels that nothing can be done about it now, since the design or pattern is already fixed. How important it is for a man to be very careful at the time of the conception of a law or an institution!

There is certainly nothing to be done about it, now that we have got this bottomless pit to fill, and the fact of our having possessed a stomach has, to say the least, colored the course of human history. With a generous understanding of human nature, Confucius reduced the great desires of human beings to two: alimentation and reproduction, or in simpler terms, food and drink and women. Many men have circumvented sex, but no saint has yet circumvented food and drink. There are ascetics who have learned to live a continent life, but even the most spiritual of men cannot forget about food for more than four or five hours. The most constant refrain of our thought occurring unfailingly every few hours is, “When do I eat?” This occurs at least three times a day, and in some cases four or five times. International conferences, in the midst of discussion of the most absorbing and most critical political situations, have to break up for the noon meal. Parliaments have to adjust their schedule of sessions to meal hours. A coronation ceremony that lasts more than five or six hours or conflicts with the midday meal, will be immediately denounced as a public nuisance. And stomach-gifted that we all are, the best arrangement we can think of when we gather to render public homage to a grandfather is to give him a birthday feast.

There is a reason for it. Friends that meet at meals meet at peace.

A good birds’ nest soup or a delicious chow mein has the tendency to assuage the heat of our arguments and tone down the harshness of our conflicting points of view. Put two of the best friends together when they are hungry, and they will invariably end up in a quarrel. The effect of a good meal lasts not only a few hours, but for weeks and months. We rather hesitate to review unfavorably a book written by somebody who gave us a good dinner three or four months ago. It is for this reason that, with the Chinese deep insight into human nature, all quarrels and disputes are settled at dinner tables instead of at the court of justice. The pattern of Chinese life is such that we not only settle disputes at dinner, after they have arisen, but also forestall the arising of disputes by the same means. In China, we bribe our way into the good will of everybody by frequent dinners. It is, in fact, the only safe guide to success in politics. Should some one take the trouble of compiling statistical figures, he would be able to find an absolute correlation between the number of dinners a man gives to his friends and the rate or speed of his official promotion.

But, constituted as we all are, how can we react otherwise? I do not think this is peculiarly Chinese. How can an American post master-general or chief of department decline a private request for a personal favor from some friend at whose home he has eaten five or six good meals? I bet on the Americans being as human as the Chinese. The only difference is the Americans haven’t got insight into human nature or haven’t proceeded logically to organize their political life in accordance with it. I guess there is something similar to this Chinese way of life in the American political world, too, since I cannot but believe human nature is very much the same and we are all so much alike under the skin. Only I don’t notice it practiced so generally as in China. The only thing I have heard of is that candidates for public office give outings for the families in the district, bribing the mothers by feeding their children with ice cream and soda pop. The inevitable conviction of the people after such a public feeding is that “He’s a jolly good fellow,” which usually bursts out in song. This is merely another form of the practice of the medieval lords and nobles in Europe who, on the occasion of a wedding or a noble’s birthday, gave their tenants a generous feast with liberal meats and wine.

So basically influenced are we by this matter of food and drink that revolutions, peace, war, patriotism, international understanding, our daily life and the whole fabric of human social life are profoundly influenced by it. What was the cause of the French Revolution? Rousseau and Voltaire and Diderot? No, just food. What is the cause of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment? Just food again. As for war, Napoleon showed the essential depth of his wisdom by saying that “an army fights on its stomach.” And what is the use of saying, “Peace, Peace” when there is no peace below the diaphragm? This applies to nations as well as individuals. Empires have collapsed and the most powerful regimes and reigns of terror have broken down when the people were hungry. Men refuse to work, soldiers refuse to fight, prima donnas refuse to sing, senators refuse to debate, and even presidents refuse to rule the country when they are hungry. And what does a husband work and sweat in the office the whole day for, except the prospect of a good meal at home? Hence the proverb that the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. When his flesh is satisfied, his spirit is calmer and more at ease, and he becomes more amorous and appreciative. Wives have complained that husbands don’t notice their new dresses, new shoes, new eyebrows, or new covers for chairs. But have wives ever complained that husbands don’t notice a good steak or a good omelette?

What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pjannkuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini. It is a pity that, in the minds of some people, at least, who are not in favor of the Mussolini regime, what macaroni has done Mussolini has undone in the cause of understanding between Italy and the outside world. That is because in food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind.

How a Chinese spirit glows over a good feast! How apt is he to cry out that life is beautiful when his stomach and his intestines are well-filled! From this well-filled stomach suffuses and radiates a happiness that is spirituaL The Chinese relies upon instinct and his instinct tells him that when the stomach is right, everything is right. That is why I claim for the Chinese a life closer to instinct and a philosophy that makes a more open acknowledgment of it possible. The Chinese idea of happiness is, as I have noted elsewhere, being “warm, well-filled, dark and sweet”-referring to the condition of going to bed after a good supper. It is for this reason that a Chinese poet says, “A well-filled stomach is indeed a great thing; all else is luxury.”

With this philosophy, therefore, the Chinese have no prudery about food, or about eating it with gusto. When a Chinese drinks a mouthful of good soup, he gives a hearty smack. Of course, that would be bad table manners in the West. On the other hand, I strongly suspect that Western table manners, compelling us to sip our soup noiselessly and eat our food quietly with the least expression of enjoyment, are the true reason for the arrested development of the art of cuisine. Why do the Westerners talk so softly and look so miserable and decent and respectable at their meals? Most Americans haven’t got the good sense to take a chicken drumstick in their hand and chew it clean, but continue to pretend to play at it with a knife and fork, feeling utterly miserable and afraid to say a thing about it. This is criminal when the chicken is really good. As for the so-called table manners, I feel sure that the child gets his first initiation into the sorrows of this life when his mother forbids him to smack his lips. Such is human psychology that if we don’t express our joy, we soon cease to feel it even, and then follow dyspepsia, melancholia, neurasthenia and all the mental ailments peculiar to the adult life. One ought to imitate the French and sigh an “Ah!” when the waiter brings a good veal cutlet, and makes a sheer animal grunt like “Ummm!” after tasting the first mouthful. What shame is there in enjoying one’s food, what shame in having a normal, healthy appetite? No, the Chinese are different. They have bad table manners, but great enjoyment of a feast.

In fact, I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don’t trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan. For I see a Chinese cannot look at a porcupine without immediately thinking of ways and means of cooking and eating its flesh without being poisoned. Not to be poisoned is for the Chinese the only practical, important aspect of it. The taste of the porcupine meat is supremely important, if it should add one more flavor known to our palate. The bristles of the porcupine don’t interest us. How they arose, what is their function and how they are connected with the porcupine’s skin and endowed with the power of sticking up at the sight of an enemy are questions that seem to the Chinese eminently idle. And so with all the animals and plants, the proper point of view is how we humans can enjoy them and not what they are in themselves. The song of the bird, the color of the flower, the petals of the orchid, the texture of chicken meat are the things that concern us. The East has to learn from the West the entire sciences of botany and zoology, but the West has to learn from the East how to enjoy the trees, the flowers, and the fishes, birds and animals, to get a full appreciation of the contours and gestures of different species and associate them with different moods or feelings.

Food, then, is one of the very few solid joys of human life. It is a happy fact that this instinct of hunger is less hedged about with taboos and a social code than the other instinct of sex, and that generally speaking, no question of morality arises in connection with food. There is much less prudery about food than there is about sex. It is a happy condition of affairs that philosophers, poets, merchants and artists can join together at a dinner, and without a blush perform the function of feeding themselves in open public, although certain savage tribes are known to have developed a sense of modesty about food and eat only when they are individually alone. The problem of sex will come in for consideration later, but here at least is an instinct which, because less hampered, produces fewer forms of perversion and insanity and criminal behavior. This difference between the instinct of hunger and the instinct of sex in their social implications is quite natural. But the fact remains that here is one instinct which does not complicate our psychological life, but is a pure boon to humanity. The reason is because it is the one instinct about which humanity is pretty frank. Because there is no problem of modesty here, there is no psychosis, neurosis or perversion connected with it. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip, but once food gets inside the lips, there is comparatively little sidetracking. It is freely admitted that everybody must have food, which is not the case with the sexual instinct. And being gratified, it leads to no trouble. At the worst, some people eat their way into dyspepsia, or an ulcered stomach or a hardened liver, and a few dig their graves with their own teeth-there are cases of Chinese dignitaries among my contemporaries who do this-but even then, they are not ashamed of it.

For the same reason, fewer social crimes arise from food than from sex. The criminal code has comparatively little to do with the sins of illegal, immoral and faithless eating, while it has a large section on adultery, divorce, and assault on women. At the worst, husbands may ransack the icebox, but we seldom hang a man for spiking a Frigidaire. Should such a case ever be brought up, the judge will be found to be full of compassion. The frank admission of the necessity of every man feeding himself makes this possible. Our hearts go out to people in famine, but not to the cloistered nuns.

This speculation is far from being idle because there is little public ignorance about the subject of food, as compared with public ignorance on the subject of sex, which is appalling. There are Manchu families which school their daughters in the art of love as well as in the art of cooking before their marriage, but how much of this is done elsewhere in the world? The subject of food enjoys the sunshine of knowledge, but sex is still surrounded with fairy tales, myths and superstitions. There is sunshine about the subject of food, but very little sunshine about the subject of sex.

On the other hand, it is highly unfortunate that we haven’t got a gizzard or a crop or a maw. In that case, human society would be altered beyond recognition; in fact, we should have an altogether different race of men. A human race endowed with gullets or gizzards would be found to have the most peaceful, contented and sweet nature, like the chicken or the lamb. We might grow a beak, which would alter our sense of beauty, or we might have merely done with rodent teeth. Seeds and fruits might be sufficient, or we might pasture on the green hillsides, for Nature is so abundant. Because we should not have to fight for our food and dig our teeth into the flesh of our defeated enemy, we would not be the terrible warlike creatures that we are today.

There is a closer relation between food and temperament-in Nature’s terms-than we thought. All herbivorous animals are peaceful by nature: the lamb, the horse, the cow, the elephant, the sparrow, etc.; all carnivorous animals are fighters: the wolf, the lion, the tiger, the hawk, etc. Had we been an herbivorous race, our nature would certainly be more elephantine. Nature does not produce a pugnacious temperament where no fighting is needed. Cocks still fight with each other, but they fight not about food, but about women. There would still be a little fighting of this sort among the males in human society, but it would be vastly different from this fighting for exported canned goods that we see in present-day Europe.

I do not know about monkeys eating monkeys, but I do know about men eating men, for certainly all evidences of anthropology point to a pretty universal practice of cannibalism. That was our carnivorous ancestry. Is it therefore any wonder that we are still eating each other in more senses than one-individually, socially and internationally? There is this much to be said for the cannibals, that they are sensible about this matter of killing. Conceding that killing is an undesirable but unavoidable evil, they proceed to get something out of it by eating the delicious sirloins, ribs and livers of their dead enemies. The difference between cannibals and civilized men seems to be that cannibals kill their enemies and eat them, while civilized men kill their foes and bury them, put a cross over their bodies and offer up prayers for their souls. Thus we add stupidity to conceit and a bad temper.

I quite realize that we are on the road to perfection, which means that we are excusably imperfect at present. That, I think, is what we are. Not until we develop a gizzard temper can we call ourselves truly civilized. I see in the present generation of men both carnivorous and herbivorous animals-those who have a sweet temper and those who have not. The herbivorous men go their way through life minding their own business, while the carnivorous men make their living by minding that of others. If I abjured politics ten years ago, after having a foretaste of it during four months, it was because I early made the discovery that I was not by nature a carnivorous animal, although I enjoy a good steak. Half of the world spends its time doing things, and half the world spends its time making others do things for them, or making it impossible for others to do anything. The characteristic of the carnivorous is a certain sheer delight in pugilism, logrolling, wire-pulling, and in double-crossing, outwitting and forestalling the enemy, all done with a genuine interest and real ability, for which, however, I confess I fail to have the slightest appreciation. But it is all a matter of instinct; men born with this pugilistic instinct seem to enjoy and revel in it, while real creative ability, ability in doing their own jobs or knowing their own subjects, seems at the same time usually to be underdeveloped. How many good, quiet herbivorous professors are totally lacking in rapacity and the ability to get ahead in competition with others, and yet how truly I admire them! In fact I may essay the opinion that all the world’s creative artists are vastly better at minding their own business than minding that of others, and are therefore of the herbivorous species. True evolution of mankind consists in the multiplication of the herbivorous homo sapiens over against the carnivorous variety. For the moment, however, the carnivorous must still be our rulers. That must be so in a world believing in strong muscles.