A Chinese Banquet
Banquets are held to celebrate the New
Year, the Moon Festival, weddings, and other special occasions. Each
event is associated with particular treats -- filled moon cakes for
the Moon Festival or New Year's pudding, for example -- but there
are also many common characteristics and ceremonies involved.
A banquet acquires much of its festive character through 2 elements:
the release from some everyday
eating customs (usually those that impose restraint)
and the exaggeration of others. At a banquet, for example, rice
doesn't need to be treated as the center of the meal, but the
respectful interaction between guest and host, a commonplace,
must be performed with extra gusto.
- Getting In
- The meal begins with the entry of the revelers into the banqueting
room. An elaborate ceremony of deference may take place at the door,
where the most honored guest is supposed to enter first. Two or more
guests may hold up this entry for some time, each insisting that the
other is more worthy of this honor. The ensuing debate can, among good
friends, lead to a bit of pushing, as the struggle escalates. Once
through the door, the process may begin again, this time over the issue
of precedence at the table. Usually, the guest of honor sits directly across
from the host, who takes the least honorable seat near the serving
door.
- Serving the Meal
- Regular Chinese meals are served all at once, but a banquet is about
bounteousness, a host's generosity and prosperity, and the joy of
celebration, so the food is brought in many successive courses. In a
further display of exaggerated courtesy, the host apologizes in advance
for the meager and ill-prepared meal about to be served. Hot towels are
distributed at the beginning and end of the meal.
- What is Served, or Beyond the Grain
- In a dramatic reversal of everyday habit, banquets consist solely of
special dishes. The meat and vegetables that serve as side dishes at
regular meals become the focus, and fan,
or grain, which is normally so important that every last grain
must be consumed, is relegated to the very end of the meal and
guests need only to pick at the fan, indicating
their supreme satisfaction. To eat one's rice at a banquet might
hint that the host failed to provide enough food.
- What is Drunk
- Alcohol is very rarely served at everyday meals, but it plays an
important role at banquets. (In fact, a banquet is called a
chiu-hsi, or "wine-spread") In the West, the type of alcohol must
match the meal according to set customs, and often the guests' special
preferences must be accommodated. This is not the case in China, where
the host often decides on one sort of alcoholic beverage, either a wine
or liquor, which will be served throughout. Wine glasses are traditionally
filled at the start of each course. The banquet will probably
be marked by guests challenging each other to drinking games throughout
the evening.
- Commencement of the Meal
- The meal begins with a toast by the host, after which there is a long
moment while the guests engage in the ceremony of beginning -- the degree
of politeness exhibited by a guest at this stage increases with every
moment he waits to start eating. Throughout the meal, the host displays great
solicitousness for the guests. Guests may refuse offers of food
or drink two times or more without being taken at their word -
or, of course, without really meaning their polite refusals.
- The Courses
- The first course is an even-numbered selection
of cold dishes, eight or ten are traditionally served. After the
cold course comes a showy soup such as shark's fin soup or bird's
nest soup. The guests help themselves to the dishes at a banquet,
but the soup is served by the host, and much drinking and toasting
accompanies. Following the soup comes a decorative meat dish.
More courses follow -- lobster, pork, scallops, chicken. Between
the courses, a variety of sweets are brought out. Peking duck
with scallion brushes, hoisin sauce, and thin pancakes is often
served in the middle of the festivities. Traditionally, the final
course is a whole fish, which is placed on the table with its
head is pointed toward the guest of honor. Throughout the meal,
the guests pay elaborate compliments to the food. Enjoyment of
the food offered is much more important than sparkling dinner
table conversation. At a banquet, the food itself is the medium
communicating the host's good wishes and the joy of the celebration.
Reading List:
- Everything You Want to Know about
Chinese Cooking by Pearl Kong Chen, Tien Chi Chen, and
Rose Tseng. Woodbury, New York: Barron's, 1983.
How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao. New York: The
John Day Company, 1945.
Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological
and Historical Perspectives edited by Kwang-chih Chang.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
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