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Sage advice from a little Suzhou eatery: Take only the food you need and don’t talk
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ON Saturday, our friends introduced us to a newly opened eatery tucked into a deep alley in downtown Suzhou. The tiny restaurant offers simple vegetables and rice at a flat price of 7 yuan per patron, and one can eat as much as he or she wants.
At the door of the eatery — apparently adapted from an ordinary residential apartment — a couple of volunteers greeted us with a bow and broad smiles, their clasped hands raised above their chests the way a Buddhist would in meeting a guest. That posed a sharp contrast to reception ladies at most restaurants in China who either give you a cold shoulder or a forced smile.
As we lined up for food, the volunteers said in a clear and cheerful tone: “Please don’t take more than you eat at once. You can always come back for more. Make sure not even a grain of rice is wasted.”
Every patron listened and complied. On the wall there are signs that forbid talking while eating. The four of us — my friends who are a couple, my wife and I — took some vegetables and rice and sat down to eat. It was the first time that we finished our meals without uttering a word. We used to babble a lot at the dining table, oblivious to Confucian and Buddhist warnings against talking while eating.
As I looked around the room, I found most patrons to be old people and migrant workers who cannot afford expensive food. None of them talked loudly as would many noisy Chinese tourists who patronize a restaurant at home or abroad. And none of them wasted a grain of rice after they finished their meals, as would most of my colleagues at our canteen or many other Chinese restaurant-goers who habitually take more than they can eat.
No leftovers
At the small eatery in Suzhou, every patron is asked to put his or her finished rice bowl in a certain place, where it will be washed and disinfected later by volunteers. As I inspected those empty bowls piled upon one another, I found no leftover food. Every used bowl was crystal clean Ñ a sharp contrast to what I see in our canteen and most other eateries, where leftovers are everywhere.
How strange, I said to myself in quiet thought. We are all Chinese, and yet we behave so differently at different eateries. Without what I call volunteers’ “warm warnings” against food waste and loud talk, we might well have been noisy and wasteful when we dined on Saturday. That environment makes a difference cannot be truer.
In the best of world civilizations — East or West — people waste no food, and people don’t talk while eating. Both mean to show our respect for what nature has endowed us. But in this age of plenty and pleasure, how many Chinese bother to show such respect? I never waste food, but still I talk a lot while eating. And some of my colleagues turn a blind ear to what I tell them: “If you waste food in this life, you may well starve in your next life.” They shrug off this as superstition.
And it’s really not just about morality. It’s about economy. People can only eat so much a day, so why open so many restaurants that charge a lot for more than one needs to stay healthy?
Turning eating into a business, especially a business with exorbitant profits, is a sin in two senses: One, it wastes food, and two, it does no good to health.
If all or most eateries in the world could follow the format of the tiny Suzhou eatery, our planet would really become a place of plenty where everyone would eat less and be healthier.
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