The Chinese generally use soya sauce in the cooking process, or as a dip, but not for adding on to a dish once it’s served up. Not even by an individual for his/her own portion — it doesn’t work, anyway, as the helpings come by the chopstickful, so it’ll be too fiddly adding a drop of soya sauce to each chopstick helping of food.
I grew up being taught never to ask for soya sauce as a dinner guest, even if I found the food bland for my taste, because it implies that the cook had not got it just right in the kitchen. Adding soya sauce to one’s food at the dinner table could, therefore, be insulting to the cook.
I apply the same principle when eating out in a restaurant.
Even eating fish and chips, which I love, I instinctively hardly ever add salt or vinegar or ketchup, the most common condiments for it. I eat it plain, as it is.
That’s the nurture bit, from how I was taught as a child, and it has stuck right through my life.
If I’m given a salad without the dressing, I’ll eat it plain (although I enjoy salad dressings).
Again, the nurture element: I don’t add extra to the dish at the table.
That’s how deep conditioning goes. In me, anyway.
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