Chapter 42 such as gourmet

There is Bole in the world, and then there is the Maxima; there is food in the world, but there have never been any gourmets, nor do they rely on food writing. Mencius said: "People who eat and drink are cheap, and they raise children for them to grow." The so-called "people who eat and drink" refer to "gourmets" or people who are regarded as gourmets by other "people who eat and drink".Translated into Stephen Chow's style of modern Chinese, it is: "Everyone looks down on gourmets, because they are a small group of selfish sluts who sacrifice the big self to fulfill the small self."

Truth is never alone, and Plato, the sage of the West, also arranged the punishment they deserved for the "children" outside China.In Plato's kingdom, people are divided into three classes, equivalent to three parts of the soul, among which those who eat and drink are relegated to the lowest level. The only difference between Plato and Mencius on this issue is that although they have the same hatred for "people who eat and drink", the former tactfully admits that without eating, drinking and drinking, the lowest part of the soul, people cannot be called It is human.

The food aesthetic activity characterized by "raising children" is indeed the word "I" at the head.Aesthetics, including food, is an individual experience in each "land of the self."It's just that our society can have industrialists, scientists, conspirators, careerists and moralists, but not gourmets.This is because compared with science, conspiracy or morality, the materials and feelings that gourmets rely on to become gourmets are mostly personal experiences that do not have universal significance. Although it is possible to specialize in a certain art to make someone a "family" or at least become a family, but diet, as a basic content of daily life, is not enough to provide convincing support for becoming a "family" .To use the simplest analogy, eating and drinking are essentially the same as excretion. If diet is regarded as the upstream industry of body functions, defecation and defecation naturally belong to the downstream industry. Then, apart from a few urologists, who else Can you call yourself a "beautiful home"?

Although there are rich social meanings in eating and eating behaviors, in the final analysis, the food is eaten by oneself and put into one's own mouth. Take out your physical experience to share with everyone. At best, you are a person who loves to talk when you are full. Such a person may get a false name because of this abnormal talk. It is an honor reserved only for those who have made it their duty to the universal truths of the world. Talking about his singing experience, Liu Huan used the analogy of a gourmet: "There used to be a group of people, so-called 'gourmets', whose first skill was to smell the smell, see the color, and know the dish with a chopstick. How about the craftsmanship? Where does this ability come from? It comes from a lot of eating practice. Then, if you want to feel the pulse of a song, you must have seen various types of songs. You have to listen to a lot, this is an accumulation of quantity. If you are a "gourmet" and your tongue is not good, a hundred fish-flavored pork dishes made by a hundred chefs Si, you all taste the same, and that won't work."

Probably the same organ is used for singing and eating. I think Liu Huan's "Yi Hai Picking Shells" very well exposed the absurdity of "gourmets": From a physiological perspective, the so-called "gourmets" are just a handful of "gourmets". "Tongue number", that is, people whose taste buds are more active than others, and summed up some personal experience from "a lot of eating practice".Singing is the same, there must be both innate good meat throat and acquired rich accumulation - here is the difference: when a singer stands on the stage to show the audience his impressive talent and superb skills, He is a well-deserved "Gourmet", because he entertained the audience with his personal "Bel Canto". What can a "Gourmet" do for everyone?Performing eating and drinking in public or talking about what is delicious and what is not?If you do this for a living, "gourmets" will soon starve to death.

Rabbits are the chief gourmets among animals, because they have 17,000 taste buds in their mouths, nearly twice as many as humans.However, this kind of talent is basically meaningless except for entertaining the rabbit itself, making it the most picky eater and the animal most likely to starve to death, let alone make a contribution to other rabbits or people who eat rabbits. what a contribution. I have noticed that many well-known gourmets always say modestly that I am not a gourmet, just a glutton. Mr. Tang Lusun, a Taiwanese gourmet who was born as a child of the Eight Banners, has always been called "greedy" by his relatives and friends.He said: "My relatives and friends are very gluttonous. Later, my friends and readers thought it was a bit embarrassing to call me gluttonous, so they called me a gourmet. In fact, I am still gluttonous." Liang Shiqiu read Mr. Tang's After "Chinese Food", I wrote an article Zan said: "Chinese people are greedy, maybe Beijingers are even more greedy." Tang Lusun responded: "I am a Chinese and a native of Beijing, so I can be the most greedy. .”

In this regard, Professor Lu Yaodong commented: "Actually, there is still a difference between a gourmet and a glutton. The so-called gourmets value themselves and only choose expensive and delicious delicacies to eat, but the gluttons do not shy away from their mouths. They eat everything and everything. Have a good taste." Although most Cantonese who have experienced the food in the capital may not necessarily agree with the statement that "Chinese people are greedy, maybe Beijingers are more greedy", but whether Beijingers or Cantonese, Chinese or foreigners, gluttony is actually a human commonality.The so-called gourmands are just the greedy people who are good at expressing themselves, just like some people are more sleepy than others, and some people are more talkative than others. .

As a glutton among gluttons who "eat everything, and eat everything with gusto", not only can they eat more happily than those gourmets who "specialize in expensive delicacies", but also can provide some food for others. Useful advice from entertaining and entertaining.Japanese drama "Lovers! Suzuki Honami in "is such a "second-level gourmet" who writes articles for women's magazines. Suzuki Honami often visits small shops to "eat civilian dishes-such as fried shrimp rice, grilled octopus balls, etc. Eat up all the dishes, and then write an article with a full stomach, which is also very popular."

In this sense, everyone who does not hate eating and can eat normally is a gourmet, of course, everyone can only act as their own gourmet. Scholars have learned the origin of "gluttony" from different sources, but when it comes to the word "gourmet", I bet more than 90% of those who know it have read the novelist Mr. Lu Wenfu. After publishing the novel of the same name in the first issue of the magazine in 1983, I realized for the first time that there is such a term in Chinese, and that there is such a kind of expert in the world. The protagonist in "Gourmet" is Zhu Ziye, an old man living alone in Suzhou, a down-and-out real estate capitalist in Shanghai.This person has no hobbies other than obstinate attention to food and drink. In his daily eating life, he starts with the rain and wind, "rises at dawn" and feels "Zhu Hongxing" to eat a bowl of "head soup noodles".

The main narrator of the story "I" is Gao Xiaoting who resolutely defected to the liberated area and pursued progress all his life because he couldn't bear the "degenerate life" of running errands and buying vegetables for bamboo when he was in high school.After the victory of the revolution, Gao Xiaoting took over a restaurant in Suzhou as a liberated cadre who fought the Yangtze River with the army. Any person who "hates food" and "loves food" started a 30-year entanglement around the issue of food and drink. The final outcome is that the college families who once issued the "anti-eating and drinking declaration" finally realized the importance of "promoting Chinese food culture" under the general trend of reform and opening up. But Zhu Ziye, who has the aura of "President of the Culinary Association", is very depressed because he can no longer eat decent "head soup noodles".

Although readers in the early 1980s were all shocked by Zhu Ziye's exquisite food that never existed in personal or collective experience, under the mainstream discourse at that time, the story of "Gourmet" was always based on " The 'Left' dangers and lessons learned in several historical stages since the founding of the People's Republic of China" as a grand narrative thread on the level of political correctness.Re-reading "Gourmet" after nearly thirty years, I am still impressed by Lu Wenfu's exquisite writing, but I have a "re-understanding" of Zhu Ziye's fate. I think the tragedy of a gourmet may not be completely The tragedy of the times is, to some extent, also a personal tragedy. In other words, even if "Zhu Hongxing" produced that night, Zhu Ziye's dreamy "head soup noodles" were protected from extreme "left" in the first thirty years. The harm of the route, the subsequent industrialization, fast food and globalization will still defeat Zhu Ziye. Even if industrialization and globalization fail to defeat Zhu Ziye and others, all "gourmets" will eventually be defeated by declining appetites and falling off. Under the teeth and withered taste buds, one can only be one's own gourmet, and one can only let oneself beat oneself. I personally hate the word "gourmet" and those people it refers to, and there is another key factor, which is that so-called foodies are mostly picky people. As far as most of the art industry is concerned, pickiness is undoubtedly synonymous with excellence, and it is also an important behavior indicator for the reason why gourmets become gourmets.Of course, from the standpoint of consumers, being picky about food is to protect one's legitimate rights and interests, and there is nothing wrong with it, while a gourmet's pickiness is often just to verify his "professional counterpart" again.In addition, gourmets and "food writers" like me are not the same way. The former is real food, while the latter is fake food.In this sense, "food writer" is actually closer to "beauty writer". Of course, the two "beauties" are not the same. Although both are body writing, there is still a principled difference between the upper half and the lower half. . What I want to say is that among the many consumer products, food is actually a very special thing. After all, it is a gift from God. As long as it can’t kill people, I would rather pray than provoke at the dinner table.As for those gourmets, who have been picky all their lives, don't they still deceive themselves by saying "big taste must be light" in the end?Damn, this is really the biggest piece of nonsense in history, it really faded away. I recently saw a joke on the Internet. Before I repost it, let me make this brief statement: I can’t control others. If anyone calls me a gourmet in the future, I will throw this joke in self-defense, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman: A gourmet went to a restaurant to eat roast duck.When the duck arrives, the cook has not cut it into slices, so the gourmet stops. He looks at the duck's butt and smells it wildly. Then he summons the manager and asks, "Is this Peking duck?" The manager replied: "Yes". The gourmet was furious: "No, this is Jiangsu duck!" With a ghost in his heart, the manager Weiwei, after a while, replaced the gourmet with a new duck.The gourmet took a closer look at the duck's butt and sniffed it wildly, and then called the manager to question: "Don't deceive me, this is a Muscovy duck from Guangdong!" The manager was horrified, and finally served the authentic Peking Duck to the guests. The gourmets watched the sights and smells again, and just munched with satisfaction.At this moment, a waiter in the shop came forward and timidly asked for advice: "Guest officer, my parents have both died since I was young, and I live on the street. I don't know my hometown. The guest officer has great powers. Can you give me some advice?"