The nature vs nurture of food: 08 (Eating ice cream in winter)

 

Having been brought up in the tropics, I’d always associated eating ice cream / ice lolly / shaved ice ball with not just eating it for the pleasant taste in the mouth but cooling oneself down as well, rather like drinking ice cold water.  With Singapore being 1˚N, one never has to consider the air temperature when it comes to eating ice cream.  It is basically “all the time, round the clock“, even late at night.

    In my first couple of years in the UK, I found it odd that people were eating ice cream in winter.  It’s already cold enough in the winter, so why add more coldness to one’s body??

    Someone I mentioned this to responded with, “Well, according to your logic, people in Singapore shouldn’t be eating anything hot at ANY time of the year in that case!”

    Haha, he had a point!  So, it's very much nurture, isn't it?

(London / Singapore)

China’s urban neighbourhood committees (China)

Mainland China has urban Neighbourhood Committees (居委会 jūwěihuì / residents committee = 居民委员会 jūmín wěiyuánhuì = 社区居民委员会 shèqū jūmín wěiyuánhuì).

They’re generally made up of retired men and women, which is an excellent way of tapping into their life experience and letting them feel still useful to society, not to mention keeping them mentally and physically fit.

Some of the most common duties performed by them are traffic directing on a small scale (e.g., helping children cross the road — we call them “lollipop ladies / men” in Britain, now supposed to be “school patrol crossing officers” which hasn’t quite caught on, apparently, according to google).

An evening student of mine, Englishman Ben, was in Shanghai on a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) course.  He didn’t know any Chinese at the time.

One day, the bus was taking ages to come, so he decided to get an ice lolly.  

He’d just finished the ice lolly when the bus arrived.  He couldn’t see any rubbish bins around, so, not wishing to miss the bus after having waited such a long time, he placed the stick at the base of a tree, thinking it was biodegradable, therefore would rot down in time.

As soon as he turned round to board the bus, he heard a shout, emanating from an old lady a few feet away.  Ben didn’t need to know any Chinese to get the message as she was pointing at him, then at the ice lolly stick under the tree, then back at him again.  

He thought, “Well, I’m getting on the bus anyway — I'm not going to let it go after having waited for so long for it,” and embarked.  

The old lady followed him up the bus, still berating him loudly, pointing out of the window at the base of the tree, then back at him.  All eyes on the bus were focused on him. 

Ben decided to move further along the bus to get away from her, but she, too, moved down the bus, pursuing him relentlessly with her angry volley.  

Eventually, Ben had to get off the bus after just one stop to get away from the very public naming and shaming.

(China, late 1980s)