Chapter 5 Chicken Feet with Rice and Food in China

In which Jimmy Lin gets teased for eating unusual foods.

Talking Points

1. Here is the perfect place to introduce a class discussion on foods of the world. Go back to review the three foods that were introduced in Chapter 1. Why do your students think that the Chinese would want to eat the feet of chicken or the stomach of a fish? What would be the advantage of using everything edible?

2. The fact chapter that follows Chapter 5 introduces the importance of rice in China. An entire way of life has grown up in Asia around rice: the Rice Culture. Rice is work-intensive and takes many, many people and cooperation to cultivate successfully. To learn more about the Asian rice culture, click here:

3. You might discuss different kinds of eating implements here and talk about the way that manners and table etiquette have developed among different peoples.
 

Activities

1. You might try a variation on the familiar KWL chart asking your students to generate a list of unusual things they’ve eaten, things they’d like to eat and things they wonder if anyone eats anywhere – this last column can be their research project: to find out what is eaten where and to present their findings to the class.

2. Ask your students to interview their parents and grandparents or other older relatives and, linking back to their discovery of their own ancestral homes, find out some of the more unusual dishes that were served there.

3. Teach your students about the importance of rice in Asia. There is an excellent unit that can be purchased from the Stanford Program on International and Cross-cultural Education (SPICE) catalog. It’s called “Feeding a Hungry World: Focus on Rice in Asia and the Pacific” and can be found at this website:

http://spice.stanford.edu/

The lesson plans are listed alphabetically.

For a free lesson plan about the rice culture, click here:

4. Below are a few interesting facts about table manners in Asia. Create a True/False oral quiz” in which you ask students, T or F, about the manners that are the most different from our own:

CHINA

• Several activities that may be considered bad manners in the West are acceptable in China while eating. These include belching, slurping noodles and soup, and smoking during the meal.
• A method of eating rice common in China that may seem unusual to Western diners is bringing the bowl up to the lips and shoveling the rice into the mouth rapidly with the chopsticks.
• Never stick your chopsticks straight into your food: this is the way food is presented to the dead and it is considered very back luck.

JAPAN

• In Japan, it is polite to speak two phrases before and after a meal. Japanese people say "Itadaki-masu" before a meal and say "Gochisou-sama" after a meal. These phrases mean thanks for the food and also indicate the beginning and the ending of a meal. If you are eating with Japanese people, try to say these phrases.
• One chopstick etiquette is to avoid directly passing food from your chopsticks to somebody else's chopsticks and vice versa. The reason this is frowned upon is that the bones of a cremated body are passed from person to person in this way at Japanese funerals.
• When you take food from large serving dishes, you may use the clean top ends of your chopsticks, if serving chopsticks are not available. Then use the other ends to put the food in your mouth.
• It is polite and proper to lift small bowls of rice or soup to your mouth when you eat. It prevents you from dropping food. When you do not get a soup spoon, it is proper to drink the soup out of the bowl and eat the solid food with chopsticks. For large pieces of food, you can separate the piece into smaller pieces using your chopsticks, or you can just bite a piece off the big piece then put the rest back onto your plate.
• It is a Japanese custom to make some slurping noises while eating noodles such as Soba, udon, and somen. People say it tastes better if they make slurping noises. People who eat noodles quietly might seem strange to Japanese diners.

KOREA

• Do not start to eat before any elderly people at the table start. This would be considered rude.
• Do not leave the table before the oldest person finishes his meal. This would be considered rude.
• Unlike China and Japan, when eating rice, lifting the bowl to your mouth is not good manners.