|
Relation entre les deux cultures
C'est une histoire entre la vie de chinois-française, comme la relation entre 2 pays.
"Look at this, it is really delicious. This time, I guarantee you, it is not spicy." I proudly pointed at the pig's feet braised in soy sauce, revelling in my own achievement. "Come on, please try one!" I encouraged her, but terrified, she ran away. "Darling, please don't disappoint me! I've spent three hours cooking it!" Salivating myself, I tried to hold her back. She desperately struggled, loudly protesting: "Horrible! I am afraid of your pig's feet. Anyhow there is absolutely nothing to eat apart from bone and disgusting skin! Have mercy, please!"
Unfortunately my Sichuan food turned out to be a fiasco. During the whole week, my wife was full of complaints, saying that my masterpiece had turned a gentle, quiet beauty into a toilet sprinter. However my Sichuan style Chinese food made me extremely happy. During the whole week, in the kitchen, I chewed the remaining pig's ear and feet with relish, swallowed with gusto the bean curd and the Yuxiang pork thread. I enjoyed my spicy Sichuan food so much that my face was covered with red spots and my stomach was burnt. Of course, when I was devouring all these delicacies, my civilised wife never showed up, reluctant to see the pig's ear and feet and admire her husband's ravenous look.
From then on, I actively followed the supreme instruction from Chairman Mao, who had illuminated my childhood, "eliminate the false and retain the true, discard the dross and select the essential". I started to eliminate without mercy all those delicacies appreciated by the Chinese such as viscera, the feet and wings of chickens and ducks, the heads and tails of fish and, at the same time, started to replace them by the meats preferred by the Western bourgeois such as lamb, beef and chicken, thus following another of Mao's supreme instructions: "make foreign things serve China, make the past serve the present." Today my Sichuan food has "pacifically" evolved into a Sino-French food, light, natural, good to look at and it has been accepted by my wife and by my mother-in-law. After having manipulated with their knives and forks for a whole week, it happens that they suddenly recall my improved masterpiece, meatball, stir-fried cabbage, sweet and sour spare ribs, rice. If I offer it once a week, they will praise it with winsome smiles on their faces; however, if I offer it twice a week, they will frown and inwardly moan and groan; if I offer it three times a week, they will glare at me, ready to explode; if I offer it four times a week, they will wipe out their Chinese chef without mercy.
But let's look at the other side of the coin. It also happens that, as a guest of honour at the dining table, I am often put in a very awkward position. French delicacies are good to look at, but difficult to swallow. Green vegetables are eaten either raw, or overcooked. Duck, chicken, fish are often cooked or roasted without sauces. However the way to eat them is quite democratic: you yourself season the cooked food with salt or pepper. What embarrasses me most is that when I have difficulty to swallow my wife's masterpiece, she always looks at me full of tender affection and never stops asking questions. "Is it good?" "Wonderful!" I automatically give it the thumbs up. "A little bit more!" She shows loving care for me and hastens to add more food on my plate until I eat myself sick. Definitely her darling is fed like a Beijing duck!
Nevertheless, even though my quick and flattering answer is always the same, its composition is totally different. My first "wonderful" contains 1% of sincerity and 99% of encouragement, my thousandth one contains 40% of sincerity and 60% of encouragement, and maybe my ten thousandth one will contain as much as 90% of sincerity and only 10% of encouragement. Today I can calmly cope with French food and also begin to enjoy its plain taste: vegetables that keep their vegetable taste, meat that keep its meat shape, the secondary ingredients such as condiments never over-powering the primary raw material. I am in particular fascinated by my wife's French vegetable soup, which is simple and natural, tasty and refreshing, able not only to fill my stomach, but also to warm my heart, just like her never concealed love.
Due to their different histories, different cultures, different physical geographies, Chinese food and French food are also totally different, but both have their particularities and charms. Neither of them is better or worse than the other, simply they are not the same. If partners in a Sino-French family season their daily food with "mutual understanding, compromise and love", it will certainly become the most delicious one in the world, whether it is French or Chinese.
|