One of the reasons the Chinese don’t invite people home for a meal is based on the modesty rule: one’s amateur cooking is not good enough for the guest, one’s home is not grand enough to entertain guests. So, people usually meet outside. However, should a guest be invited home for dinner on the odd occasion, or an unexpected guest arrive just before dinner time, one has to make sure that the ingredients are up to “guest-entertaining” scratch. Therefore, no bean sprouts, for they are, in the East anyway, one of the cheapest foods around: in the 1960s, one could get a pound or two (in weight) of them for 10 cents (Singapore money, which was S$8 to £1).
Chinese dried mushrooms were, and still are to this day, very expensive, so they were usually brought out only on such occasions, in addition to special occasions like Chinese New Year. Such was the frugal practice in my house that years later, when the children were grown up and all working and contributing towards housekeeping, if my father came home and found dried mushrooms served up for dinner, he would say, “Dried mushrooms! Someone coming for dinner then?”
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