Reading the Air | Thoughts after reading "Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper"

Book title: Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper : A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China
Author: Fuchsia Dunlop
Inside illustration: Sebastian Wilkinson
Translator: Zhong Peijun Version: Second Edition Second Brush Publisher: Owl Publication Date: 2017/3 (First Edition 2012/6)
ISBN 978–986–262–319–0
Pricing: NT$360

This is a very interesting book. It is the food adventure of a young woman from the dark culinary world(?) in China. Just like the title of the book, the story can be roughly divided into the fragrant and charming "pepper" and the curious and strange "shark fin".

The author, Ms. Fuxia, studied in Chengdu in the 1990s and became fascinated with Sichuan cuisine. She is now an internationally renowned Sichuan cuisine expert. She studied at a Sichuan culinary college and even published recipes for Sichuan and Hunan cuisine. And all this is recorded in this book.

There are always parts that are enjoyable and parts that are scary when you are exposed to otherworldly cuisine, no, I mean exotic cuisine. The author describes the changes in detail and describes the details in beautiful words. From the very beginning, she thought preserved eggs were scary, to lingering over the red soup of Sichuan cuisine. However, in the end, although she seemed to have integrated into China, she still had to look at some of China's food culture that was different from the West from a Western perspective.

This book has actually been with me for a few years, and I have read parts of it intermittently, but it was not until recently that I actually read the entire book.

Her words describing the appearance and smell of the food were very vivid. I could almost smell the aroma of Sichuan peppercorns in the air. At first, I always thought she was exaggerating. After careful reading, I realized that, yes, it is like this, but I never thought it could be used. Such words to describe. Even when she later started to mention some dishes that Chinese people rarely eat - insects, snakes or certain wild animals, she wrote it in a way that made people feel unbearable, enough to overcome the fear of special ingredients.

In addition, she also mentioned the biggest difference between Chinese food and Western food: taste. The book mentions:

Taiwanese people would call this texture "Q", and very elastic food would even be described as "QQ". This is a rare example of a direct borrowing of the Roman alphabet.

There was news in 2022. It mentioned that a German quiz show asked Taiwan what QQ means to describe food. At that time, the news was still popular there, and people like the light of Taiwan abroad were complacent, but I think I found the source of the question. .

If Sichuan peppercorns represent the delicious parts, then shark fin refers to those controversial parts: such as endangered ingredients (?), the brutality of the slaughtering process, the risk of diseases spread by wild animals, food safety issues, etc.

In the postscript of the book, she mentioned that when she picked vegetables at home in the UK, she found that there were worms in the vegetables. She thought that since she could eat worms in China, why couldn't she eat them in the UK? So I ate the cabbage worm...

When I read this, I was a little dumbfounded. Well, there are bugs in the dishes you wash. It just means you didn’t wash them thoroughly. What does China’s eating of bugs have to do with it?

Vaguely, I saw the young British woman who did not dare to eat preserved eggs. More vaguely, I saw the West’s curious interest in other cultures during the Age of Discovery.

However, when it comes to cultural biases, I’m not much better off. After all, when I think of Britain, I only think of fish and chips, afternoon tea, and star-gazing pies. (What retaliatory statement?!)

The original English book was published in 2008, and the Chinese version in Taiwan was released in 2012. The book I read was a reprint in 2017, and a new version was released in 2023, with a Chinese and English index and a changed subtitle. The simplified Chinese version was released in 2018 and has a different publisher and translator than the Taiwan version. It is said that there is a chapter in the original English version that mentions Xinjiang, but it is not included in either Chinese version. I read the text a little, and the translator on the other side said that she translated it directly from the English version given by Fu Xia, and made no further deletions in the Simplified Chinese version. Apparently, the author himself had helped with the review. In this regard, she is indeed an expert on China. However, this does not explain why the Taiwanese version does not have this part, but because I have never found the table of contents of the English version, I have no way to check whether this chapter actually exists.

Finally, it is strongly recommended not to read this book late at night, otherwise there will be consequences at your own risk.

postscript:

There is a passage in the book that I still want to make a small vindication for the livestock industry.

The author says:

Those tender pork belly stewed with red dates...doesn't anyone think there are growth hormones in them?

Growth hormone is a very expensive thing. Unless these meat animals are regarded as Messis , or have Messi value, using this will hurt the cost. The rapid growth of meat animals comes from the simplest method: genetics. Decades of breeding (for example, selecting the fastest growing ones to breed the next generation) resulted in the breeds we use for meat today.

Of course, I don't deny that some strange chemicals may be added, but it shouldn't be something so expensive.