Eating Chinese

Without doubt part of the fun of cooking Chinese is to serve and eat Chinese.

Setting: The classic Chinese table is usually round because dishes are traditionally brought in one at a time, diners helping themselves from a common central dish, and it is important that each guest be an equal distance from the central dish. Each place setting has bowls, a china spoon, chopsticks, saucers. Condiments are set out: usually vinegar and soy sauce in pourers and chili sauce, chili oil and mustard sauce in saucers.

Etiquette: Etiquette decrees that each diner reaches for food from the central dish, serving himself with his own chopsticks from that part of the dish facing him. Perfect politeness also decrees that he should endeavor not to let the chopsticks touch his mouth and that he picks up every piece of food that his chopsticks touch from the main dish. When laying down one's chopsticks never cross them. That is taken by many Chinese to be the height of bad manners and even of enmity, for they believe crossed chopsticks to be a sign of ill luck for the host.

Tea: Hot tea without milk or sugar is the usual accompaniment to a Chinese meal unless wine or spirits are being drunk. Tea is usually drunk between dishes to cleanse the palate. It also has a social and ceremonial function and is said to be 'healthy', dissolving the grease in the food and washing it through the system and away. Curiously, in hot weather the tea induces a gentle pleasant sweating and thereby cools the body. In the winter it warms it. Certain herbal teas also have a medicinal value and are meant to be very good for the liver and the kidneys - quite apart from the delicate aroma and delicious flavors. Vanity too is served here, for some of them are supposed to be good for the complexion and for the brightness of the whites of the eyes. So they say.

Wine: Warmed sake with hot weak tea as a chaser makes