A Cross-Cultural Food Story in Braised Fish

When I first arrived in the UK, I temporarily stayed with a British family. The hosts, Mike and Sheila, were both Catholics, and both kind and hospitable; they gave me a feeling of home at a time when I was still "shell-shocked" in the UK. Usually, besides reading and sports, I had a special hobby, which was cooking. While at Mike's home, in order to show the wonders of Chinese cooking, I would occasionally go into the kitchen and show off my skills, and what I was most proud of was making braised fish with mackerel. After Mike ate my braised fish

Afterward, his eyes went wide: "My God, this is the best fish I have ever eaten in my life!" Then he asked me how I had cooked it. Later, we had several more chances to eat together, either at his home or at his daughter's home. I remember that the last meal together was before I returned to China; and that day happened to be Mike's birthday. He had made the arrangement several days earlier, insisting that I cook fish for him again, and he asked his wife to go to the supermarket to buy the best fish. Cooking fish for Mike for the last time, I felt a little sad, so naturally I cooked it more carefully than usual, and also more successfully. Dinner was eaten in the garden. In the British summer, the sun sets very late; at nine o'clock in the evening, the sun was still in the sky. The afterglow of the setting sun fell across the garden, across each of our faces, and also across that plate of braised fish with "Chinese characteristics." After dinner, Mike looked at the fish bones on his plate and asked me to leave behind the recipe for the braised fish, so that later his wife could follow the recipe and cook fish for him. He had asked me for the "recipe" before as well, but each time I hemmed and hawed; it was not that I was secretive. As everyone knows, when we Chinese cook, generally there is no recipe. Cooking a dish well depends entirely on a kind of feeling or experience; only an amateur cooks while looking at a cookbook. Actually, the fish I cooked for Mike was just made using the method we commonly use: fry the fish in oil until it is 70 percent cooked, add scallions, ginger, and wine, add water, sugar, and soy sauce, then add a little Sichuan douchi sauce that I had brought from China, and simmer over low heat until all the seasonings are fully absorbed by the fish: in this way, a plate of braised fish with thick sauce, a golden color, and a well-balanced salty, sweet, and spicy flavor is done.

For the reasons above, in the end I was unable to give Mike and the others a "recipe" in the true sense. I knew that the recipe Mike wanted had to have some definite numbers. For example, how many grams of fish, how many grams of ginger and scallions, how many grams of salt and sugar, and so on. But when I cook, I had never thought about these things. How much salt to put in, how much sugar to add, depends on experience, on judgment, even on a sixth sense. From this little dish of braised fish, we can also see the enormous differences between East and West in cultural tradition. Western culture, since ancient Greece, has shown the characteristics of its scientific tradition. In the Western view, everything can be explored, from the macro level of celestial bodies and the universe to the micro level of cells and atoms; at the same time, everything can be spoken of. They believe that the senses are sometimes unreliable, and they trust quantification and measurement. Chinese culture has lacked such a scientific tradition since ancient times. We seem to trust perception more, and everything depends on impression. Chinese culture holds that everything beautiful is difficult to put into words; a good poem lies in its "not using a single word, yet fully capturing the spirit." In ancient times we had the world's best lyric poetry, but we rarely had systematic theories of poetic creation, only commentary-style "remarks on poetry."

The different concepts of time in East and West are also a concrete manifestation of their different cultural traditions. Westerners are particular about precision, emphasize arranging activities strictly according to a timetable, emphasize planning, and oppose "changes." On the first day of the New Year, many Westerners will set the important activities for the year, even down to which day. Once, a British teacher invited me to dinner. She held her schedule book and asked me whether I was free at 12:15 p.m. on the 23rd of the next month; I would like to invite you to dinner. But when we express distance and time, the ancients also had sayings like these: the time it takes to smoke a pipe, a boat journey takes 5 days and a horse ride takes 3 days, and so on. In shopping, Westerners like to make a list before going to the supermarket, and when they get to the supermarket, they buy item by item according to the items listed; while we (especially women) love to "stroll the streets," may buy a lot, and sometimes spend half a day shopping without buying a single thing. Of course, with the continuous deepening of East-West cultural exchange, mutual understanding and integration between Eastern and Western cultures have also become increasingly obvious. In work and daily life, we have absorbed more scientific elements. But the reason culture is culture is that it has very strong continuity and resistance to foreign cultures. I believe that the next time Mike sees me, he will still ask me for the recipe for braised fish, and I likewise will still not be able to give him a satisfactory answer.