Food and Identity Musings
Jul. 7th, 2004 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
motodraconisMy thanks to R. at work who told me about the most excellent Chinese Supermarket in Liverpool. It is also thanks to her that I've developed a taste for Instant Honeyed Ginger drink and Fusenyuan(?) a kind of dried and shrivelled plum that looks like a diseased gonad and has intense flavour.
For some reason this makes me muse on my identity, perhaps having a French mother raised me to try any food were others turned up their noses at it just because it looked different from what they're used to. Describing to friends at primary school that I'd eaten frogs legs/snails/shark/squid/horse or rabbit always had them backing away from me in horror and disgust. (Yet I'd still tell them - gleefully to see the look on their faces.)
There was a kind of subtext at school that having a "foreign" mother made me different, substandard or even subhuman. Sometimes this even flared up into bullying and name-calling that could only be described as racist. Perhaps because of this, I had a lot of friends who, (like me) had a non UK parent or parents. I remember feeling very envious of one chum who got to visit relies in Hong Kong, while all I got to visit were my grotty relies in Paris. (Duh, Paris! How boring!)
Generally, (if I think on it at all,) I think of myself as European first, British second. But I have noticed a strange phenomenon when I go abroad (especially outside Europe.)
I start to become extraordinarily English, and I become hyper-aware of my English mannerisms. It's something that I have no control over, and it can be embarrassing, especially around Aussies who love to take the piss out of it. I'm not talking about the beer-swilling, loutish, I go to Spain so I can sit in an English theme pub all day drinking beer, eating chips and mocking the locals, pain in the arse, utter twat halfwit mannerism. More a kind of oldy worldy, stiff upper lip, black and white BBC accented, "Goodness Old Fruit, a cup of tea with a spot of milk please," mannerism. If you've ever read Asterix in Britain you'll know exactly what I mean. (But without the boiled meat and veg.)
I dunno if I have my dad to thank for this, in contrast to my mum, (who seems to be stereotypically French,) my dad is stereotypically oldy-world English, so much so, a bowler hat would not look out of place on him.
Scary stuff, here follows a minor example (one of many, but I will not list them, you'll be relieved to know.)
Some years ago, I went on an exchange trip to Russia, staying in the flat of the Russian students. Now I have this thing, (and it's said to be an English mannerism,) that when visiting someones house and they give you dinner, politeness is eating everything on your plate. To leave so much as a scrap would be frightfully rude, it might indicate that you were less than impressed with their food, even, that you actively disliked it. So you have to eat it all, smiling away, even if you find it disgusting.
To this day I am unsure if Russians, (like Chinese tradition,) would prefer you to leave something on your plate, to indicate that you are full and satisfied with the meal. It could have been just this family. But as soon as I'd finished my plate they'd pile up a second helping, and a third. Which of course I'd feel obliged to eat out of politeness, even though I was quite full enough after the first helping. This nightmare food loop would continue until, (physically and mentally unwell,) I'd be forced to admit defeat and refuse food. It took me a few days to realise what was going on, so hard wired was this mannerism. I really wish someone could have warned me before I visited, and god knows what kind of bottomless pit my exchange students must have thought me to be.
I dread to think! :-)
For some reason this makes me muse on my identity, perhaps having a French mother raised me to try any food were others turned up their noses at it just because it looked different from what they're used to. Describing to friends at primary school that I'd eaten frogs legs/snails/shark/squid/horse or rabbit always had them backing away from me in horror and disgust. (Yet I'd still tell them - gleefully to see the look on their faces.)
There was a kind of subtext at school that having a "foreign" mother made me different, substandard or even subhuman. Sometimes this even flared up into bullying and name-calling that could only be described as racist. Perhaps because of this, I had a lot of friends who, (like me) had a non UK parent or parents. I remember feeling very envious of one chum who got to visit relies in Hong Kong, while all I got to visit were my grotty relies in Paris. (Duh, Paris! How boring!)
Generally, (if I think on it at all,) I think of myself as European first, British second. But I have noticed a strange phenomenon when I go abroad (especially outside Europe.)
I start to become extraordinarily English, and I become hyper-aware of my English mannerisms. It's something that I have no control over, and it can be embarrassing, especially around Aussies who love to take the piss out of it. I'm not talking about the beer-swilling, loutish, I go to Spain so I can sit in an English theme pub all day drinking beer, eating chips and mocking the locals, pain in the arse, utter twat halfwit mannerism. More a kind of oldy worldy, stiff upper lip, black and white BBC accented, "Goodness Old Fruit, a cup of tea with a spot of milk please," mannerism. If you've ever read Asterix in Britain you'll know exactly what I mean. (But without the boiled meat and veg.)
I dunno if I have my dad to thank for this, in contrast to my mum, (who seems to be stereotypically French,) my dad is stereotypically oldy-world English, so much so, a bowler hat would not look out of place on him.
Scary stuff, here follows a minor example (one of many, but I will not list them, you'll be relieved to know.)
Some years ago, I went on an exchange trip to Russia, staying in the flat of the Russian students. Now I have this thing, (and it's said to be an English mannerism,) that when visiting someones house and they give you dinner, politeness is eating everything on your plate. To leave so much as a scrap would be frightfully rude, it might indicate that you were less than impressed with their food, even, that you actively disliked it. So you have to eat it all, smiling away, even if you find it disgusting.
To this day I am unsure if Russians, (like Chinese tradition,) would prefer you to leave something on your plate, to indicate that you are full and satisfied with the meal. It could have been just this family. But as soon as I'd finished my plate they'd pile up a second helping, and a third. Which of course I'd feel obliged to eat out of politeness, even though I was quite full enough after the first helping. This nightmare food loop would continue until, (physically and mentally unwell,) I'd be forced to admit defeat and refuse food. It took me a few days to realise what was going on, so hard wired was this mannerism. I really wish someone could have warned me before I visited, and god knows what kind of bottomless pit my exchange students must have thought me to be.
I dread to think! :-)
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 05:04 am (UTC)Consider yourself fortunate - some of us are cursed with this problem all the time:-) Old Thing.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 07:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 09:28 am (UTC)Tea abroad
Date: 2004-07-07 09:34 am (UTC)I heard that Stockholm (I think) has an "English Shop" that sells, amongst other things, tea and Marmite!
A big mug of tea and marmite on toast is a great breakfast.
One thing I did notice while in the states was that I tend to use the phrase "Cheers" to mean thanks, and this seems to confuse them quite a bit, But as Moto. said, I found I used it more and more just because they didn't get it! Most odd.
Re: Tea abroad
Date: 2004-07-07 09:55 am (UTC)I use "cheers" all the time, (I probably caught the habit off you.) I love colloquialisms, and long or obscure words, (whenever I can remember them, and often end up pronouncing them incorrectly!) Admittedly if I'm talking to someone, (who's English and in the UK,) who has (ahem,) limited vocabulary I get more wordy, probably out of spite. I can me mean like that sometimes.