The Chinese style of hospitality is to make sure your guests have enough to eat — the host must not be seen to be stingy. The guests, on their part, must make sure they’re not seen to be greedy, so they must exercise restraint — I’d heard of people who’d actually eat BEFORE going to a dinner party, so that they really cannot eat much. This is, therefore, the ritual (what I call “a silly game”): the host will press the guests to eat more food, the guests will decline; this will go on for a few times (sometimes even five) before one party surrenders. It’s an interesting exercise for guessing who’s genuine: in pressing more food onto the guests’ plate / in refusing another helping.
I’ve always found food tastes better when partaken in company. (When I’m the guest, there’s also the element of the host being a better cook than I, which is not difficult.) So, it’s not surprising that I end up eating more than my usual quantity. (My mouth and stomach do not always work together: if my mouth fancies the food, my stomach gets overruled even when it has no more room.)
The other element is my abhorrence of waste, so I will clean out the rest of the dish if there’s any threat of it being binned, even when I've had enough already. This is where some astute friends have worked out how to get me to eat more or take the rest home.
One of them, ex-student Slovak Martin, would take the dish to the bin, sort of dangle it close to the flipped-up lid as if about to tip the contents into the bin, and look at me with raised eyebrows. Never failed to help me decide I’d eat that last morsel or take it home.
Mauritian Colette would cook an extra large portion, then say they don’t eat leftovers, that it’d all go to the food waste recycling bin (therefore not really wasted). I always succumb.
(London, 2000s)
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