Dining out in Luogang Case Study

When journalist Peter Hessler was invited for lunch in the rural Chinese village of Luogang in Guangdong Province, he was in for a surprise.32 After he was seated at a table in the Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant, the waitress asked him bluntly "Do you want a big rat or a small rat?" Unsure of what to do, Hessler asked the waitress what the difference was and was informed that the big rats eat grass while the small rats eat fruit. Both tasted good, he was assured. As he contemplated his choice, Hessler looked at the people sitting at the next table. A young boy was gnawing on a rat drumstick, but he couldn't tell whether it was from a big rat or a small one. After asking himself how he got into this predicament, he finally made a decision: a small rat. He chose an item from the menu called simmered mountain rat with black beans. He selected this over other possibilities, including mountain rat soup, steamed mountain rat, simmered mountain rat, roasted mountain rat, mountain rat curry, and spicy and salty mountain rat. The Chinese say that people in Guangdong will eat anything. Besides rat, people at the Highest Ranking Wild Flavor Restaurant can order turtledove, fox, cat, python, and an assortment of strange-looking local animals whose names don't translate into English. Selecting a menu item involves considerations beyond flavor and texture. You order cat not just because you enjoy the taste but also because cats are believed to impart a lively jingshen (spirit). You order a snake because it makes you stronger. And you order the private parts of a deer to make you more virile. Why would you eat a rat? Because it will keep you from going bald and make your white hair turn black. After a few minutes, the waitress asked Hessler to come back to the kitchen and select his rat. In the back of the kitchen, he saw several cages stacked on top of one another. Each cage contained about thirty rats. "How about this one?" the waitress asked. "Fine," Hessler replied. The waitress then put on a white glove (presumably for hygiene purposes) and grabbed the chosen rat. "Are you sure this is the one?" she asked. The rat gazed at Hessler with its little beady eyes. He nodded his approval. Then the waitress grabbed the rat by its tail and flipped her wrist, thereby launching the rat through the air until it landed on its head on the concrete floor with a soft thud. There was little blood. Hessler was told that he could return to his table; lunch would arrive shortly. Waiting for his meal to come, Hessler had an opportunity to speak with the owner of the restaurant. The first thing he noticed was the owner's full head of thick black hair. The owner said that local people have been eating rat for more than a thousand years. However, his customers insist on eating rats from the mountains because they are clean; they won't eat city rats, he insisted. He assured Hessler that the government hygiene department came by regularly to inspect his rats and had never found anything wrong. Before walking away, the owner smiled and said that you can't find food like this in America. When lunch was finally served, Hessler tried to think of this as a new experience. He tried the beans first, and they tasted fine. Then he polked around at the rat meat. It was clearly well done and attractively garnished with onions, leeks, and ginger. Nestled in a light sauce were skinny rat thighs, short strips of rat flank, and delicate tiny rat ribs. He hesitantly took his first bite and found the meat to be lean and white without a hint of gaminess. It didn't taste like anything he had had before. It tasted like rat. Fortunately, he had lots of beer to wash it down with.

Questions:

1. What would you do if you were faced with the situation that Peter Hessler experienced at the Luogang restaurant?

2. Have you ever had a similar experience in another culture when you were pressured to eat or do something that was acceptable - or even required - in the local culture but that you found uncomfortable? What did you do?

3. Are there aspects on your own home culture that foreign visitors might find offensive or uncomfortable for some reason? What might you do to put your foreign guests at ease in this situation?  

4. Think about your eating habits and food preferences? How easy would it be for you to live in a foreign country with drastically different cuisine?