Introduction

Poor old Anglo-Saxons. We have to get ourselves in a special frame of mind to eat better than we usually do. We have to decorate our houses and buy presents for our children, just to get us in the mood. How unlike the run of mankind we are in this respect. I have known students in Shanghai who were actually hungry (a condition little known in the junk-food overfed West) and who, when invited to a dinner at a restaurant they could never afford, and offered food of a quantity and quality they may seldom or never have seen, showed a critical appreciation of what was set before them. They did not wolf down the delicate steamed fish with its slivers of ginger and garlic, though that was probably the method usually employed to get through their twice-daily ration of half a pound of gritty boiled rice with a couple of tablespoons of vegetables and a scrap of fatty pork. These students, who had latched on to our party to practise their English, and not in the hope of getting a square meal, showed by their demeanour, their table manners and the fashion in which they savoured every bite, slowly and reflectively, that though they may have been almost starving, they knew how to feast.