Way of the Cabbage

Confucius say: why in Chinese restaurant does menu item number 58, Head of Lettuce in Soy Sauce cost exactly the same money as menu item number 89, Whole Roast Duck? Venerable sage also at loss to explain why price of Bean Curd Plate is equal to Combination Platter Number Four (with wonton soup and your choice of spring roll or spare rib appetizer). Surely ancient Chinese wisdom reveals error in menu, since roasted meat much more valuable than simple boiled crops?
But apparently not. Indeed, to my mind at least, the high value Chinese restaurateurs attach to leaves and roots is one of the most inscrutable features of old Cathay, and like those dreadful Mandarin vogues for footbound women and powerful eunuchs, this strange expensive vegetable fetish will always appear rather peculiar to my Western eyes. One can only imagine that deep within the walls of the Forbidden City in some concealed corner of the Emperor’s herb garden or beneath the glass pagoda of his Imperial greenhouse, intensively trained coolie’s run to and fro with rickshaw wheelbarrows piled high with the Secret Dragon Ingredient that must obviously add such an extra special zesty kick to Chinese vegetables, making them worth much, much more the regular kind. Or perhaps it is the work of that arch-fiend, the despicable Doctor Fu Manchu and his private army of obedient agricultural henchmen, nefariously bent on charging hated Occidentals outrageously absurd amounts of cash for what is only, on the face of it, just a bowl of steamed sprouts.
Whatever. I am sure the message in your fortune cookie is the same as mine: "Leftover Peking Ravioli will go bad tomorrow because Feng Shui in refrigerator is all wrong. Foolish man order too much food. Wise man order only Szechuan Cabbage Leaf in Oyster Sauce. Old proverb say: eat through mouth but pay through nose."

Comments

[Gilbert]

Old but venerable fortune cookie message . . .
Help, I'm being held prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie bakery.