Old Xiamen in Foreigners' Eyes

Chopstick diet

They do not use knives and forks. Their food is principally rice and "chowchow" or hash, and they use two small sticks like lead pencils. These are held between the fingers, so as to bring the two ends together or separate to suit the article they are eating; and although a fast-eating Yankee would starve if compelled to eat with chopsticks, yet I do not see but the Chinese are as fat and as hearty as any people.　　　  -- Coffin, 1908

Chinese food names

To the Westerner it would be preposterous to name a dish after a poet, or a stew after a playwright. But the Chinese openly name certain cuts of meat after great names in history and their various soups after great artists. They go further than this. They write poems about a certain vegetable soup and relate the details of entire menus at the crucial point of a story, for they believe that the good soup honors a man's name and that the menu, too, is crucial in the development of the story.　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　  -- Spencer, 1943

By Bill Brown