From East to West, tastes differ-勇于尝试，肆意生活

We talk about Chinese food in the West as if it’s asingle, unified cuisine, but anyone who has visited China knows that’s not thecase.

 There is East China food, West China food, and Northand South China food, and that’s before we even start talking about thecombinations between them and the sub-categories.

Imagine trying to methodically work your way throughsuccessive regional variants until you’ve tasted every dish and cooking stylethis vast country has to offer. You might start your tour from somecentral point and swing out in an ever-growing arc, each day anew savoringnew foods or culinary variations.

But let’s face it. You could no more taste every variation ofChinese cuisines than you could see every gradation of hue in the seven colorsof the rainbow’s palette from red through orange, yellow, green, blue andindigo to violet.

The culinary expanse boggles the mind.

So how do I fit in here?

There are two kinds of Westerners.   

There are the bold, for whom no challenge is too great --like, say, the swashbuckling privateer Sir Francis Drake, who plundered Spain’ssilver shipments from the New World in the 16th century to serve QueenElizabeth I of England.

Then there are the lily-livered ones ... why singlethem out by name? They already have enough burdens in life.As Drake’s contemporary William Shakespeare wrote: “A coward dies athousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once”.         

I don’t mean to compare myself to Drake, but I, too, caneasily think of things far worse than the taste of death. The taste ofjellyfish, for example.

An exaggerated sense of courtesy compelled me once toeat jellyfish -- a creature that in my country we loathe evenstepping on at the beach, let alone putting in our mouths -- at awelcoming dinner for a new China Daily editor in Beijing. I expected rigormortis to set in soon after my jaws clamped down. 

The cowards among Westerners will always choose familiarfoods, the blander the better. Hence, the success of fast food restaurants.They give Westerners wherever they may find themselves in the world somethingboring and familiar to eat.

The Chinese, on the other hand, cast caution to the wind whenthey travel abroad. Recently, eight Chinese tourists in Israel made the newsfor a meal they ate.

They went to a restaurant famous for its humus, a savorychickpea paste. There must have been a shortage of other delicacies on the menubecause, according to The Washington Post, they ordered only some side dishes,lamb for a main course, dessert and vodka.

What do you do if you can’t order a lot of different types offood? They ordered a lot of what there was and paid premium prices. Thirtykilos of lamb for the eight of them, and multiple $400 bottles of vodka. At theend of the meal, the bill amounted to $4,400.

Oh well, you only live once. So live it up while you can.