a sort of Cultural history of Fried Rice

When we think of fried rice, we think of the white rice with the green peas and orange carrot bits, mingling with the yellow pieces of scramble egg and pink pieces of fried pork… steaming happily all in one dish after having been stir-fried in a big wok. This, perhaps, is the standard image of a plate of Yangchow fried rice, a staple food of many a Chinese restaurant in the US and other Western countries. Depending on where in the world you are, the flavors in this plate of Yangchow fried rice will vary… and this is where it gets more interesting than whether or not your order of fried rice has shrimp in it or not.

Fried rice originated as a dish over a thousand years ago in southern China, sometime around the Sui Dynasty. From there on, fried rice quickly spread throughout the regions, eventually making its way all the way into and past northern China, where the diet predominantly revolves around main courses comprising of noodles, and to the far western reaches of China such as Xinjiang, where rice is not widely grown… And so fried rice gained a life of its own, each region developing their own brand of fried rice. The very nature of fried rice made it perfect for doing so in that rice is the most obtainable food in almost every area of China, and the ingredients in a tasty dish of fried rice were variable accordingly to what the local landscape could provide.

There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of different kinds of fried rice in China today. Each kind of fried rice reflects the background from which it comes, for, after its migration from the original home of Yangchow, it has changed itself to fit the needs of the people populating its new home. What a dish of fried rice contains is a very accurate portrayal of where it hails from both geographically and culturally.

There is Xinjiang fried rice, where it contains scrambled eggs and beef (never pork, because Xinjiang peoples are mostly Muslim) but no vegetables (because the high plains of Xinjiang are less suited to agriculture)… Egg fried rice, which is more popular and widespread in Northern China – historically the lesser region when compared with the fertile South – the cheapest fried rice (and often the cheapest meal) one can get at almost any given restaurant… Yangchow fried rice in its many manifestations (quite often, they change so much in accordance with local tastes that they develop to become a whole new type of fried rice): in Hong Kong and much of the South (renowned in for the good supply of seafood), there is a variety of Yangchow fried rice with an emphasis on the shrimp in it, in Yangchow and other areas of southern China, an emphasis on the abundance of vegetables in the fried rice (the South of China grows vegetables very well) to the point that oftentimes, well-made southern Chinese style fried rice contains more vegetables than rice itself… and finally, the varieties of fried rice prevalent in America, such as fried brown rice (I’ve never even seen brown rice served in restaurants in China before, much less friend brown rice) and fried rice as a side dish or fried rice that replaces normal white rice in a meal… Regardless of its appearance and taste, fried rice has become a national cuisine in itself: not only is there a single well known brand – Yangchow – that is widespread around the entire world, there are also many many different versions of fried rice from every corner of China (and Asia, even) that represent not only its Yangchow ancestor, but more the area they hail from and the culture of the people that they nourish.

The history of fried rice is the history of its change and versatility, from the rich and gluttonous versions, full of seafood and vegetables, served in hotels and high-class restaurants to the rice-heavy meager egg fried rices loved by the lower-class workers in big cities… fried rice has always been available to everyone everywhere because of its adaptability in incorporating different things. But yet, largely, fried rice has not changed at all. A thousand years ago, it was rice fried with what vegetables and meat were available, and now, it is still fried with whatever is available for eating to the many peoples of China.

SOURCES:

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%82%92%E9%A3%AF

http://www.sdslpx.com.cn/tspf/4.htm

http://news.xinhuanet.com/food/2006-04/30/content_4493335.htm

and my own head and imagination

NOTES:

Yangchow fried rice is actually not all that steeped in history, many sources pin its origins at a date of no more than 150 years ago.

My connections of different kinds of fried rice and their locales/cultures is mostly based on my own observations; such connections seem to have rarely been studied, or published online, at any rate.

Eating the World

Here in America, every food is marketed on its nutritional merit. Looking around me, my box of Cheerios is covered on an entire side about how it's good for lowering cholesterol. This little bag of Goldfish I have here has a big label on the corner stating how it's got zero grams of trans fat, as does the big bag of Fritos sitting over there. Every bottle of VitaminWater harps on the fact that it replenishes water and essential nutrients, and even such unwholesome things as canned soup can boast that they contain 50% of the RDA for vitamin A.

In my nearly six years of time in Beijing, China, I rarely ever noticed any food, processed or not, at any supermarket, roadside stall, corner store, etc, that had labels or wording that tried to get people to notice or buy it on the merit of its nutritional benefits (or the fact that it lacked certain things known to be detrimental to nutrition). Indeed, very few foods even had a table that listed the nutritional facts, and many foods lacked a detailed list of ingredients. Over a billion people buy that food and eat it.

Speaking from strictly my own experience, I think that Chinese people on a whole are healthier than American people. Despite the absolute lack of nutrional information or any sort of regard for that information, Chinese kids have less inherited problems (such as ADHD, things like that, etc, etc) and allergies, Chinese adults are less likely to have chronic illnesses or depression. For example, I've never met a Chinese kid that was allergic to any food (or anything, indeed) and very rarely are there kids that have problems concentrating. (Given, although I have met many many people in China, my view is definitely rather narrow.) In America, however, practically every fourth person I meet has some sort of health problem that either they inherited from their parents or developed through their life.

In recent years, there have been more and more western companies entering the Chinese market with their American processed foods and such, and along with this, there has been a rise in obesity. Within another generation, problems that are common in America such as premature birth, birth defects, genetically inherited problems, etc, will probably rise. Prior to all this globalization, Chinese kids were raised only on their mothers' cooking, whatever could be afforded would be cooked and the family would eat it, and kids were not fat and families rarely had problems. (Excuse my utopian description of China; it is not and never was perfect and Chinese food is definitely way too heavy on oil and salt)

This all brings me to come to one example, Fast food. Not only does it cause numerous health problems, it also keeps the family from gathering together at home around a home cooked meal. This decreases communication and family bonding, and increases the likelihood of problems arising between members of the family. This, in my eyes, is definitely responsible at least partially for the increase in divorces, and depression amongst youngsters.

But fast food is definitely not solely responsible. Despite the supposed mass of benefits that western industrial food production has to offer, at the time when it is entering the Chinese market on a large scale, the health of Chinese people and families is deteriorating. And despite all the health foods and information that is available to America, America is still in a crisis with their food. Coincidence?

In closing for both this blog entry and this food class, I'd like to point out that food has two primary uses. One is to feed people, to nourish them. The second, something that I picked up on from class, is to bond people, to bring them together. Continuing on the theme above, food production in America largely undermines the first use of food in that industrial agriculture produces foods that most likely have many unforseen health dangers, and food consumption (think fast food, TV dinners, canned meals, grab-n-go type things) largely undermine the bonding powers of a good meal prepared at home.

I tried to think of a cool name for this, but it's still going to be called 'Health'

One of the central issues, for me, throughout the entire Anthro Food class in the past month, was health. Most directly and obviously, it was the health benefits of eating green, organic and locally as opposed to eating random store-bought, over-processed, exported imported then exported again 'food'.

I'll admit, the choice is easy. Especially in Asia, health is very important, for even if a man has led a poor life, if he is healthy throughout then it can be said that his life was good. So, being an Asian, my health is important to me; I don't want to grow a tentacle out of my waist or get cancer or have multiple organ failure stemming from heart failure when I'm forty years old or something. I've learned in the class that food is important to the healthy being of a person, since it regularly goes in our bodies.

There was an article we read that said bigger produce actually has less nutrition. Industrial agriculture's big aim is to have bigger produce to increase yields, and this led me to believe that eating green and locally is good for me, because it's got less crap in it, and it was grown with more individual care than factory farmed produce, so it will probably have more nutrients and good stuff. These are things that I learned through the class, before which I would have never imagined the effect of factory farms and industrial agriculture on the food that goes into us that in turn affects our health and well-being.

Books like Omnivore's Dilemma put all this into perspective, bringing into play the visual aspects of pigs and cows crammed together in a shed, suffering in their own waste, drowning in fat-enriched corn-feed. These are the same pigs and cows that we've fed ourselves on, are still feeding ourselves on, and I can't believe that this is healthy for anyone involved, at all.

More importantly, however, I feel the health of the land and the animals is far more paramount. As much as organic and green foods are good for people, I came to realize that they are even better for the land and the earth. Tomatoes are raised entirely without pesticides and chemical fertilizers, so they are no longer responsible for water poisoning and strange mutations in wildlife around them. Cows and pigs are put back in normal conditions and are raised healthily on grass lands and big barns. This runs contrast to the dead zone that industrial agriculture is creating in the Gulf of Mexico and the myriad sicknesses that over-use of anti-biotics in modern animal farming has caused.

So, for me, through this class, I've learned of the importance of local/green foods and their relation to an improvement in not only my health, but the health of the earth that we live on and the health of the animals that we live with. That, ultimately, is the point in my mind: by helping ourselves in this problem, we also help the earth. Why not?

-terraces- //The terror of our times

Terraces (梯田) - Jay Chou (周杰伦)
translation by me
original Chinese version of the lyrics can be found here or in the post below this post

ah Wenshan, my next album will be released by the time you finish writing this... it's ok, let's take this slowly, I'll write this song myself
In my middle school years, the green of the terraced fields were the most beautiful I'd ever seen
Riding on its glory, I won in the photography contest; even then when I hadn't written any lyrics, I looked like a poet in the photos
On the bus to school, the sight of cows outside the window, chewing on the expanses of green gave the atmosphere an unspeakable feeling of freedom

Chorus:
hoi ya e ya .... oh, my beloved cow
hoi ya e ya .... oh, where have you gone

The little gully beside the noodle shop remembers our dreams of growing up, our childish years of green naivety, then skipping to the harvest gold days of our entrance into the world
The people's sweat mixes fulfillment and joyousness - these are the images that I treasure most within, these are the images I am most afraid of losing
Paintings I did based on these memories, they were my other prize-winners
What use is winning prizes for paintings based on memories? To encourage me to reminisce even more?
Hmph, how much I wish to tear those paintings up and exchange them for the images in my memories, to bring them back into reality
Replace the new hotels and their fancy western styles, restore the green terraces that disappeared so quietly
The oxen that once plowed the fields are now just mere shadows on the portraits hanging from the newly painted walls
Crowds of tourists sometimes allow their line of sight to venture beyond their windows but all they see is the hotel next door, the one that's even taller and grander

Chorus:
hoi ya e ya .... oh, my beloved cow
hoi ya e ya .... oh, where have you gone

Just because the land is suitable for many uses, is it right to use her so?
Selfish mankind, are you embarrassed at yourself, distressed with your behavior, will you ever tire of destroying nature?
For the sake of art, you say, you need to cut down a tree.. is this right?
For the sake of decor, you say, you say why does it concern me... Must we make it so that photographs of beauty that once was are the only thing we can pass down for later generations?
Sad and pitiful, the vast greenery that once represented our forests have all turned into images in documentaries, the abundance has been engulfed in smog and smoke
I cannot teach you, I am not your instructor, I am not your principal
and I can't just slap you on the face...... or shove an essay in your face and make you learn it
You all don't want to listen, you'd rather ignore me, I know, but I still must write on
You all may never realize
Under the microscope, mankind is more of a realist, more selfish
but These things are an art that are truly difficult to comprehend

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
People are ignorant. The people as a whole can congregate and create their own voice, but when they do not know, they cannot take action. People are ignorant, and it takes someone to enlighten the people, and then they are not ignorant anymore, they are also enlightened.

Jay Chou is one of the most prominent, well-known, beloved, famous, rich, powerful, influential and far-reaching Asian artists/performers of this decade. His albums constantly top the charts and his name is revered throughout hundreds of millions of households in China and many areas of Asia. Indeed, he is oftentimes referred to as President Chou.

Unusual that he should write and sing about an issue as trivial as this? For, the top singers and artists of our society, the Britneys and Beyonces, the Avrils and Nickelbacks, the 50Cents and Kanyes... they don't sing about it. And they're just as equivalently widely-known as Jay Chou is in Asia. What do they sing about? They sing about their crushes that cheated on them, their mothers that are supposedly ripping them off, their long-lost loves, the gangsta next door that looked at a brutha awkwardly and subsequently got shot...

What about the very earth that you live on, that gives you life?
It's not cool enough, we don't care enough.

This, perhaps, reflects the overall mindset of American culture. The people as a general mass tend not to care about anything that the big/powerful/famous don't care about. But, hell, if Tom Cruise says it's important, it must be, and lo and behold, you'll have people swarming to the cause by the millions. But if Ryan bloody Seacrest doesn't tell you it is important, damn, by God, 95% of the dumb teenagers and 20somethings out there won't give half a puff about it. It doesn't exist to them. That selective ignorance, that in itself is a problem.

However, I wish not to flame on the ignorace of the general public. I'd like to point out the fact that Jay Chou, being the famous/powerful/rich musical celebrity that he is, does not neglect to mention and talk about things that important, such as the environment and why we should give a damn about it. Hell, he even made a music video for the song (watch it!!). And thus, people all across Asia, people that have far less access to information and such, now have access to a message, strongly composed and easily transmitted - about the environment and how it's important, how we should strive to protect it.

The message spreads through his music. When developing third world countries' governments are going all out to spur growth at any cost, his message spreads through the hearts of the people who actually live off (and on) the land. Similarly, the United States government and its many corrupt, shitfaced, corporate minion politicians are constantly doing everything they can to maximize profits at the cost of destroying the environment, which makes perfect sense to themselves because they didn't and don't have to pay for the trees and land and rivers. But in America, who is there to spread the message? The ones with real power to spread a message (millions of people buy albums, no one pays to hear politicians rant) just choose not to.

People are born ignorant. The ones at the top, the ones with the means and power to remedy ignorance should Do So. In America, Doing So has probably been calculated to bring in less profit or whatever, so for whatever reason, the top artists and singers and performers of our time do not Do So. They Don't. People are ignorant - that's why there are leaders to guide the people - but the greatest sadness comes when the leaders are ignorant too.



photo by lestwe4get on webshots.com, taken from album 'Yuanyang Rice Terrace Field' (check it out, there are lots of brilliant photos)

NOTE: Jay Chou usually only writes the music for his songs, his lyricist writes the lyrics. But his lyricist did not write this song, and on one of the relatively rare occasions where he has an opportunity to write his own lyrics, Jay Chou chose to write about nature and the environment...

-terraces

文山啊等你写完词我都出下一张专辑罗没关系慢慢来这首歌我自己来
说到中学时期家乡的一片片梯田是我看过最美的绿地
於是也因此让我得了最佳摄影莫名其妙在画面中的我不会写词都像个诗人
坐著公车上学的我看著窗外的牛啃草是一种说不出的自由自在

hoi ya e ya 那鲁湾 na e na ya hei 哦～我亲爱的牛儿啊
hoi ya e ya 那鲁湾 na e na ya hei 哦～跑到哪儿去啦

面店旁的小水沟留著我们长大的梦绕过天真跳至收割期
人们的汗水夹杂著满足与欢喜是我现在最舍不得的画面也是我另一项参展作品
靠著回忆画成油画拿到奖状有个啥用鼓励你多去回忆是吧
哼我真想撕掉换回自然怎黱梯田不见多了几家饭店住在里面看西洋片
几只水牛却变成画挂在墙壁上象徵人们蒸蒸日上
一堆游客偶尔想看看窗外的观光景点但只看到比你住的再高一层的饭店

hoi ya e ya 那鲁湾 na e na ya hei 哦～我亲爱的牛儿啊
hoi ya e ya 那鲁湾 na e na ya hei 哦～跑到哪儿去啦

因地地质综合利用利用对还是不对
自私的人类狼不狼狈破坏自然的生态会不会很累
你说为了艺术要砍下一棵树酱对还是不对
你说为了装饰请问干我啥事是不是只能用相机纪录自然拿给下一代下一代回味
可怜可悲森林绿地都已成纪录片闻不到绿意盎然只享受到乌烟瘴气
我不能教育你们我不是你们老师我不是校长
也不能给你们一巴掌...掌...长...长...长篇大论
你们并不想听我知道但我没办法我就是要写
你们可能永远不能体会显微镜底下的我们会更现实更自私这种艺术真的很难领悟

fkdjshfkjsdhfkjahkjh

It's not a fad or some trendy bandwagon.
I would if I could, but I can't so I won't.
That's the biggest problem facing the people of modern day America when it comes to their choices in food. Everyone knows that it's a lot easier to just stop by McDonald's (which is cheap and fast) and pick up a quick meal, or to make a quick run on Safeway (which is everywhere) for the dinner groceries as opposed to stopping at an organic restaurant (which is expensive) or going all the way to a Whole Foods market (which is not everywhere) for daily dietary needs.

Everyone needs money. Almost everyone needs their time. McD's and Safeway save money and time for people. More people will choose (or be forced into choosing) the lesser options of genetically modified foods and pesticide ridden vegetables for these simple reasons. It's inevitable for as long as we live in the market based world...

This is where the New Yorker article goes wrong entirely. Seeing as how eating organically, locally and pesticide free is almost always more time and money intensive, there is no way that it could just be 'another middle-class lifestyle choice'. The middle class struggles enough as it is to maintain a healthy and productive life without having to go to the troubles of eating greener (let's not even get into what lower-class people are suffering through, perhaps eating fast food twice a day or more...). To prove this point, I did a quick online search of Whole Foods and Safeway around me. Using the zipcode locator, I found three Whole Foods markets within five miles of me, whereas there are more than eight Safeway stores within just three miles of my location. For middle class people where money and time (time that is important because it can be used to make more money or do other things that are forcibly neglected due to overwork) are essential to the well-being of the family, the difference is huge.

Therefore, one can reasonably assume that eating locally and organically is not just some sort of middle-class lifestyle choice that just so happens to be conveniently located on a moral high ground. It's not about morals, it's about realistically being responsible for what you do to your own body, and about what your legacy will be on this planet - a regressively destructive or a progressively contructive one. Let's be real here: when it's a matter of eating poorly and pumping yourself full of poison to die ten years sooner, or eating healthily and living ten years longer, it is no longer an issue of morals. Sure, there are people that have moral grounds for eating locally and green, but most people are just concerned over what exactly is going into them, even if being more aware means less pocket money and spare time.

your own food

Food is an indication of individuality. In this world, people increasingly demand the ability to choose what exactly they buy, and in this case, they are choosing more consciously what they are buying to eat.

In recent years, many people have begun to harp on the benefits of eating organic or local or pure vegan for whatever reasons, etc. Nowadays, when I hear of people like that, I instantly think that they are some sort of hippy environmentally-concerned extremist (and I use 'extremist' and 'hippy' here very loosely, as in someone that takes an unconventionally different approach to things and absolutely not someone that does drugs and/or blows things up). Not that these people necessarly are those kind of individuals, but the point is that this is the impression I get of the overall group of vegans, or locavores, or whatever - it's their image in my mind.*** Their individuality on this earth (to me, in my mind, at least) includes or is even partially defined by the fact that they maintain a diet that is relatively limited to organic and local foods.

If I, for some reason, happened to think that organic-eating obssessors are annoying (I don't, really, not any more than I think normal people are annoying), I might want to make a statement letting them know what I think. Here, individual identities are clashing, that of my organic-hating self and theirs of organic purity. This clash has roots in the fact that I and they differ in our opinions about food and how food should be grown/prepared/produced. They have defined themselves, willingly or not, in my eyes as organic hippies that annoy me to no end (they don't really, not any more than normal people are annoying), so I proceed to attempt identify myself as an individual who disapproves of their beliefs to the point of insanity; to mediate this issue, I fill a van with Fritos and crash it into one of their organic markets while spraying pesticides, with a plastic toy water gun, all over their organic fruit stalls.
What individuality. The point here is, different food beliefs have conflicted.

Conversely, food can more literally define a person in that instead of identifying a person's individual beliefs and thoughts, it identifies the person's outside appearance. A news article recently reported that different people hailing from different areas have different waistlines. The argument went that, people from poorer areas had less access to wholesome, healthy foods, and thus were plumper on average. Here, food is literally determining what a person looks like. The people living in poorer areas will probably eat more cheap junk food and fast food, get fatter, and be seen as overweight/obese by other people. Along the same line of thought, less well-kept, well-off people may be eating less healthily, so others may see them as being poorer. The food they eat, indeed, the food that they actually have access to, is determining not only their waistlines and health, but also the social class that they belong to. In this case, the individual is reflecting the food they eat, much more than the food is reflecting the individual.

A man that is excessively picky about his food and goes only to gourmet French restaurants might be seen as entirely strange by average working class people in Denver, yet adored by the sophisticated upperclassmen of downtown Hong Kong. Indivuality is reflected in the food that people eat, but sometimes when people cannot choose from a wide variety, the food is more reflected in the invidual instead. Food not only feeds people, it can build and define people.


*** I absolutely support the movement of eating more locally and with less chemicals and/or industrial additives, this paragraph is used purely for purposes of illustrating a point. Regularly eating pesticides is not something I look forward to doing all my life.