Stuffed Like a Chinese Dumpling
The Art of Connection Through Feasts
Withnail: 'Scuse me. We were wondering if we could possibly purchase a pheasant off of you.
Jake: No. I've got nothing to sell.
Withnail: Come on, old boy. What's in your hump?
Jake: Now look, you. These pheasants are for my pot. These eels here are for his pot. What makes you possibly think I've got anything for your pot?
Withnail: What pot?
Marwood: The cooking pot.
From Withnail and I - Bruce Robinson (1986)
Feb 2005, I was in the city of Baoding 保定, Northern China, celebrating Chinese New Year aka Spring Festival. Two weeks of food and fireworks! Every day we ate dumplings (jiaozi in Chinese/gyoza in Japanese) one of my favourite foods. On the 3rd day I woke up in agony, I had an extended stomach from overeating and had to go a local clinic for acupuncture.
While I am lying there with needles in my face and stomach the amiable Dr. Wang gave me a lesson in Chinese culture. As it turns out, in China, when you are full up you leave a small amount of food in your bowl. If you finish what is in front of you, you are given more, you see the host wants to ensure you are satisfied. I was raised to eat everything in front of me, to show the host you are grateful, and not to waste food. So you see what happened right? I eat everything, they give me more, I eat more. Round and round we go until I am in hospital and the doctor is laughing his arse off at the cultural miscommunication that lead to me being stuffed like a dumpling.
This wasn’t my only lesson in Chinese food culture.
Business in China is done at the dinner table. There are numerous complex rituals and traditions being enacted, subtle but vital to establishing good relationships. Good relationships are the bedrock of business in China. If you don’t eat what you are offered then this can be taken as an insult and trust will not form. No trust, no relationship, no relationship, no deal.
In my first year in China I gained 14lbs (just over 6 kg) in weight, despite exercising a lot! Every week there seemed to be a feast, a celebration of my status as foreign guest, and an excuse to bring people together.
Mammoth Issues
Food is obviously central to survival. For the longest period of human history we were hunter gatherers, some of us still are. However, we did not store food for long. Apart from there being no refrigerator, and salt being too rare to use, even if you smoked food to cure it you had the problem of having to carry it.
Hunter gatherers were largely nomadic. Tribes would have to track food and resources, locating shelter, and avoiding predators. So medium and long term storage made little sense, you may never be back to get it, and someone or something else may have eaten it before you returned.
When a hunt was successful the best bet was to eat as much as possible, after all, you had no guarantee as to when you would eat again. People would feast, and then fast. According to Dr. Mindy Pelz, our bodies have evolved to this pattern so well that fasting triggers numerous health benefits. But let’s focus on the feasting.
So it’s 15000 years ago, you are part of a hunting party, and you’ve taken down a woolly mammoth, all 8 tons of it! I hope you are hungry. Successful hunting comes with a lot of prestige, especially within your community whose lives depend on it. So it makes sense that the hunting party shares their successes with their tribe. But still, 8 tons of Mammoth is a lot of food.
Given the limited potential for storage, there is likely to be waste. So what do you do with all the excess?
Early Investment Strategy
By sharing excess food, that would otherwise spoil with other tribes, our ancestors were able to invest in their future. Recognising the potential to be able to call upon them in the future when your need was greater. In effect, our ancestors were able to extend community relationships, create meaningful connections, and hedge against future shortages by sharing their excess food.
This is the beginning of feasting as one of the most important community events of early mankind. Beyond prestige, investment, and building relationships, sharing food controlled food ‘production’. Given the energy and time demand of hunting and gathering, plus the risk of failure in both activities, food ‘production’ was much harder then than anything we have ever experienced.
The value of the food shared, whilst also protecting what food is available in the environment, makes sharing a hugely valuable investment. What better way to share than by throwing a feast? A feast creates the opportunity for bonding to occur, information to be shared, and technology and knowledge to spread.
“Always rise to an early meal, but eat your fill before a feast. If you’re hungry you have no time to talk at the table.” - The Hávamál (Words of the High One) - A collection of Viking poems.
Over time the function of feasts expanded to include payment of debts, displays of wealth and power, a means to gain allies and frighten enemies. Its not just business that is negotiated at dinner tables. Feasts were used to negotiate war and peace, to celebrate rites of passage, to communicate with the gods and to honour the dead.
One of the oldest archaeological feast sites is at the Natufian site of Hilazon Tachtit Cave. Evidence suggests a feast was conducted at an elderly woman's burial about 12,000 years ago.
Butter Cakes and Beer
Feasting has been mythologised for thousands of millennia, and plays a part in every religion today. One of the earliest literature references [circa 3000-2350 BC] involves Enki the Sumerian “Lord of the Earth”, god of water, knowledge, crafts, and creation offering the goddess Inanna some butter cakes and beer.
A Chinese Shang dynasty bronze vessel [1700-1046 BC] shows worshipers offering their ancestors wine, soup, and fresh fruits. (No dumplings apparently). The Greek poet Homer [8th century BC] describes several feasts in the Iliad and the Odyssey, including the Poseidon feast at Pylos.
Whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Hindi your calendar will no doubt contain feasts. The same goes for secular people too, whether it is Halloween (sweets are for feasts too), Thanksgiving, a birthday, or a dinner party to catch up with friends. Sharing food brings people together, nurtures relationships, and lifts spirits.
Fasting and feasting are universal human responses, and any meal, shared with love, can be an agape. - Elise M. Boulding
A Family That Eats Together Stays Together
Not every cliché is a cliché so to speak. Studies carried out by The Journal of Adolescent Health Experts show “…more frequent family dinners are related to fewer emotional and behavioural problems, greater emotional well-being, more trusting and helpful behaviours towards others and higher life satisfaction.”
The dinner table is in some ways the the microcosm of what's going on in the family in general. When a family sits down together, it helps them handle the stresses of daily life and the hassles of day-to-day existence. Eating together tends to promote more sensible eating habits, which in turn helps manage weight more easily.
There are other less predictable benefits, especially for children. These include better academic results, lower rates of depression, more resilience and higher self-esteem. Additionally, family meals are linked to lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and eating disorders. The Family Dinner Project based at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Psychiatry Academy believe family dinners nourish more than the body, but in fact nourish ethical thinking.
Eating together is about coming together, about belonging, an opportunity for expression, meaningful connection, and healthy growth. It's a fundamental part of our health, relationships, culture and well-being.