Seasonal food with shark fin soup
July 24, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , trackback
Without unique local food, traveling would not be nearly as intriguing. Every bite takes me closer to a culture. Elizabeth Gilbert devoted a third of Eat Pray Love to her eating her heart out in Italy.
It’s fascinating to observe what people eat and how people procure their food in various countries, the closer to the food source, the better. A number of years ago, I visited the Tokyo Tsukiji fish market, the sheer scale of which completely shocked the “romantic” inference of The Old Man and the Sea out of my system.
I love visiting fresh produce market in different regions and countries. This one is fairly typical in China. In smaller cities or rural areas, markets are often outdoors. Notice there is no refrigeration, no spraying of fine mist to keep the produce “fresh”. When asked, the vendors told me exactly where the food came from - all within 25 miles of the market.
One of our bus rides took us to hilly farm fields in the south east of China. Farmers plowed their fields with water buffaloes and planted with hands. I was also told that most fields were mix-planted, i.e., many different produce and grains planted in close vicinity. This picture has beans, peanuts, orange trees and some other green veggies. The endless plantable Midwest plains simply don’t exist in China. Mass production of a single crop is probably not feasible.
In the northwest of China where deserts reign, amazing fruit and nuts are harvested in occasional oases - grapes, melons, apricots, dates, plums, walnuts, and almond. Sorta like the central valley of California.
Spices were one of the precious trading items along the Silk Road two thousand years ago. You can still find crates of spices lining the streets.
Along with the good, we also found the absurd - gimmick food like these nectarines that had patterned paper pasted on them as they were ripening. The end result? nectarines with characters on them.
And of course there is the ugly, very ugly! Shark fin soup is often served at Chinese banquets as a symbol of wealth and prestige. While the practice of finning of sharks has always been brutal, the problem was not noticeable until the economic booming in China. With the rise of the middle class, the demand for shark fin soup has been increasing. The demand is likely a primary contributing factor in the global decline of many shark species.
This restaurant proudly displays its shark fin. I am there to demonstrate the size.
Every time we are in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I read about the horrifying practice of finning of sharks. But I think they are preaching to the wrong audience. Spend money and run smart ads in China. Educate the young. Hire celebrities if it works there. Traditions with hundreds of years of history are not easy to over throw. Then again, women there no longer have bound feet.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Comments»
Very interesting post, Cindy, as was yesterday’s. I never thought about China not having a grain-producing area, a “breadbasket”, if you will. I knew they practiced very intensive farming and double cropping. It must be quite a challenge to feed such a large population efficiently.
The shark thing really bothers me. I never like to see an animal killed for just one small (relatively) part.
Great point, Cindy. Shark fin soup makes me sick to my stomach. We should be focusing our advertising dollars on educating the younger, up and coming generation. I’m not sure why organizations spend so much time preaching to the converted.
Joyce: It does seem like a challenge to feed such a large population with mostly traditional labor-intensive agricultural practices. It also seems strange that we actually import produce from China. Can it really be cost effective?
GB: I wonder if it because organizations feel that they might be stepping on foreign culture’s toes by telling them that what they’ve been doing for centuries is bad. If that is the case, the education needs to be done locally. Western orgs such as MBA can fund local orgs that take the messages locally. As I was expressing my disgust towards shark fin soup, a young man told me that he had seen an ad on TV by Yao Ming, a huge Chinese basketball star who was trying to persuade people not to eat shark fin soup. Perhaps that was a good start.
Our good friends at WildAid are doing just what you suggested: running ads in China, featuring Chinese Olympic athletes, targeting trade in shark fins (for soup) and other wildlife (for medicinal products). Check it out at http://www.wildaid.org.
Ken Peterson, Monterey Bay Aquarium
Ken: thanks for the great information and the link to WildAid. A part of the consumption habit seems to be related to lack of education (e.g., rhino horns aren’t exactly aphrodisiac). With aggressive education, it may enlighten the mass. However another reason for the increased demand is that the newly minted middle class folks want to show off their wealth. That may be more frustrating to work with.
Oh wow, just drooling over the spice market pictures. It must have smelled divine! (I much prefer spice smells over floral ones.)
Chile: I am with you there. The smell of spices goes through my body and the smell of flowers merely flows past me. The love of spices by people served as a good reason for merchants to risk their lives carrying spices through the Silk Road
Many cultures have “barbaric” consumption habits. French with its Pate, Italian with it Veal, Korean with its Dog, American with its factory-farmed, corn-fatten Beef, Congoli with it bush meat. How do you decide what’s okay and what’s not okay? And who makes these calls?
CA: good point. We are all biased by the culture in which we are raised. I personally don’t agree with any of the consumption habits you raised. But a vegetarian would probably call me barbaric for eating chicken. There is perhaps a common standard we can employ: if a species approaches extinct because someone’s consuming habit, that is a problem we should all be concerned, unless of course the said species is the mosquito family.