A conversation with a
Chinese co-worker
Her: Where are you from in the US?
Me: Arizona. Do you know it?
Her: No
Me: Do you know where
California is?
Her: Yes, yes in
the West!
( I show her with my
hands how Arizona borders California and Mexico.)
Her: Mexico? So have you been to Mexico?
Me: Several
times, it’s really close to where I live.
(She hesitates like
she’s thinking of how to say something delicately, then uncertainly…)
Her: Ashlee, I
have seen in movie that in Mexico they had very rude way of killing chicken.
(In typical Chinese
fashion I can tell she’s trying to tell me something but she’s doing it
indirectly.)
Me: What do you
mean? Tell me what they do.
Her: They just
take the head and…
Me: And… (I make the gesture of breaking the neck with
my hands)
Her: (Her eyes get wide with horror) Yes!
(At this point I think about the endless
restaurants and markets I have seen in Shanghai
with birds hanging in the window or stacked up on trays.)
Me: Well…how do
you do it here?
Her: We just cut
the.. (She pauses and then slices the
side of her neck with her hands.)
Me: You cut the
neck and let the blood drain out? (She nods) Yeah.
In America we just cut the head off with a knife. (I didn’t think it was possible but her eyes get even wider in horror.)
Her: YOU do this?
Me: Oh, no no no!
I don’t do it myself, I buy the chicken
that way! They cut the head off at the
butcher.
Her: (Shakes her head) I could never.
Me: Oh no,
neither could I. I don’t want to kill
the animal I just want to eat it.
Her: Yes, yes
exactly
Me: I don’t
think I could eat it if I saw it killed either.
(Elaine agreed with me
but I’m sure she was just being polite.
I find it hard to believe that she hasn’t seen many, many animals killed
in front of her before she eats them.
Just yesterday my friend from Texas had a difficult time calming her 10
year old son down after he saw a chicken be killed at a sidewalk restaurant. Freshness is very important to the Chinese,
so in many places the food is killed right before it’s served.)
I proceeded to tell my
Chinese friend about how back home my cousin hunts deer (really he hunts elk,
but that would be too difficult to explain I already had to explain ‘hunting’).
And I tried to tell her a funny story about my aunt trying to butcher one of my
cousin’s deer on the kitchen table and get everything cleaned up before his
wife got home. I’m not really sure she
understood all of the story, but at the end she said…
Her: You can do this in your country? Hunt?
Me: (I
could see images forming in her head of Americans running around waving guns
and killing wildlife at random) Yes, but not everyone does it, only some
people. And you have to have a permit
for the gun and for the hunting.
Her: (Relieved) Ohhh. We can’t do that here because China has many
laws about guns.
Me: Yes I know, but no one hunts for food? Even outside of the city.
Her: There are many laws protecting wildlife.
Me: Yes, in America we have laws like that too.
Her: But here, still some people do it against the
law.
Me: Yes in America people do that too.
A friend of mine was telling me a story about a couple she new who were living in China for a short while. The wife was very homesick and in a bit of culture shock. Her husband suggested they should go get a puppy. They went to a store where they had dozens of cute little puppies...she took her time and picked out the perfect one. She pointed out the one she would like to take home. The shopkeeper smiled and picked up the puppy and took it in the back...coming back shortly with a dead puppy in a to-go bag! Apparently buyers can pick out the puppy they want to have for dinner!!! The wife was on the plane the next day headed back to the US!
ReplyDelete