My father absolutely loved parties. When he was put in charge of my maternal grandparents’ grocery shop, he used to rope the villagers in for a drink and titbits, all grabbed off the shelves, once the shop was shut for the day.
Chinese entertainment style is to have cooked dishes served up one at a time, piping hot, fresh from the wok, without any rice*. So, my father would make the two shop employees stay behind and cook the food, which produced a lot of grumbling in the kitchen.
When he was found to be hopeless at managing the shop, and was relieved of that post, he transferred his partying to his home, with the womenfolk taking the place of the two shop employees.
He’d set up a big round table in the living room, complete with a lazy Susan. The women (my mother, paternal aunt, maternal aunt, us four daughters, the two servant girls) would be slaving away in the kitchen.
Once the men had had time to settle down and take their first sip of alcohol, we’d serve up the first dish. We’d then retire to the kitchen and quickly eat whatever had been put aside for us, keeping an eye in the meantime on how far the men had got with the first dish, to be ready to cook and serve the second dish. Sometimes, instead of putting aside some food for ourselves before serving up the dish, we’d eat whatever of the previous dish the men might’ve failed to polish off, which would mean us eating only after they’d had their fill of the dish.
This would go on, dish after dish, with us snatching fleeting feeding moments behind the scenes. It might be a party at home, but the number of dishes would easily run up to eight, if not the standard ten for a banquet. Serving five dishes over the span of an evening’s entertaining just didn’t seem hospitable enough.
One day, my second sister, the rebellious one, who was in her late teens at the time, refused to take any more of this treatment. “We’re the ones doing all the work. Why should we eat behind the scenes and between courses, sometimes even only the leftovers, like servants?”
She went to the living room, pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. The men’s eyebrows went up. Annoyed, my father asked: “What are you doing here?!?”
“Well, I have worked very hard, helping to cook all this food, so I think I have earned the right to sit down at the table and eat it comfortably.”
Shamed by this, the men’s memory was suddenly jolted: “Oh, where’s your wife? She should be sitting down, eating with us too.”
My father never held another men-only party after that.
(Singapore, 1960s)
*Rice is the cheap and filling ingredient, which the host would not serve for fear of being thought miserly. At a proper banquet, the rice dish (a fried rice) is usually Course No.8 of 10 courses, in case the guests are still hungry after all the meat and seafood.
Well done by your little sister! I bet you were proud of her...
ReplyDeleteI am puzzled by the absence of rice...for me, it's not a matter of it being a filler, it's an essential balance for the rest of the food, otherwise it's too rich and heavy... I could not eat food without rice or bread...
She's not my little sister; she's 5 years older than I. Absence of rice: it doesn't have to be total absence, but you do not serve rice for the first few dishes at least, because it's not a meal for filling one's tummy but for socialising -- and drinking certainly, for the men (one does not drink on an empty stomach, so the food's for going with the alcohol, not the other way round). In fact as a guest, even if you're ravenous, you still pick at the food, unless you're an old family friend (even then, you only eat a bit more than you would if you didn't know them that well). You always leave something in your bowl or cup/glass, because if it's empty, they'll think you haven't had enough and will immediately fill it up, so food goes to waste just for indicating you're so full you can't possibly manage even one more mouthful. At the restaurant, the customers will also not clean out the plates, to prove that they can afford to leave the food partly uneaten. Stupid practices all round, just on account of face, etiquette, politeness. When I was invited home by my colleague at Conoco Taiwan, my bowl would be piled high with helpings from all the dishes, with the rice buried beneath. As soon as I'd eaten enough of the top layer to reveal a bit of rice, they'd pile on more. They'd do this 3 times, then leave me to get at the rice beneath, because I'd have had enough of the expensive ingredients by now for them to feel they'd done their bit as hosts.
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