Cultural Reflections on Eating Habits: A Letter from the Past
My Dear Little Plum,
I must tell you something that has troubled me more than it should. Yet, I cannot seem to let it go.
The younger people here no longer know how to eat.
I do not mean that they lack food. The markets are full, the stalls lively, the tables set with enough variety to please even the most particular guest. No, what is missing is not the food, but the way of taking it.
They sit without care for order. Dishes arrive, and instead of waiting, each reaches as he pleases. Hands wander across the table. Chopsticks cross like tangled branches. Some even leave them standing upright in the bowl as if making an offering to ancestors at the wrong moment. I nearly choked when I saw it.
And the noise, Little Plum. The noise.
Talking with full mouths. Laughing loudly over the bowls. One boy slurped so enthusiastically I feared he might inhale the entire soup and vanish with it. When I gently suggested a slower pace, he grinned as though I had told a joke.
A joke!
Do they not understand that eating is not merely filling the stomach? It is a reflection of the household. Of upbringing. Of harmony.
Father used to say that the table reveals a person more quickly than any examination. One sees patience—or the lack of it. Consideration—or selfishness. Even the way one lifts a bowl speaks of discipline.
Here, I see haste and distraction. I see young people who eat as though chased by time itself.
Perhaps I am becoming old before I intend to. (You may laugh—but only a little.) Yet I cannot help but think something is being lost.
I have taken to eating earlier, when I can. A quiet bowl properly held. Chopsticks set down as they should be. It settles the mind in a way that a noisy company does not.
Still, I wish you were here. You always remembered the small things. Even when you were little, you held your bowl more carefully than most grown men I see now.
Write to me and tell me—has it changed there as well? Or do people still remember that a meal is something to be shared with care?
Your sister,
Zhenyan
