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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   4253 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 26, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The way it was explained to me by Chinese friends was that excess == wealth. Chinese have grandparents who at different times couldn't buy enough food to eat, and parents who were restricted in the amount and quality of ingredients they could buy. So using ingredients extravagantly feels like a celebration of wealth and comfort. Similar story from Korean friends. Metal bowls and chopsticks were only available to the nobility, so they became a symbol of prosperity and class. Similarly, only the nobility had the money and ability to secure a wide enough variety of dishes to completely cover the table as is often done even in Korean homes. I'm sure that once famine and extreme poverty have mostly passed out of living memory people will question the need for such portions.

Re. the other comments on ramen broth -- you really shouldn't drink a lot of ramen broths. Tonkotsu, shio, and shoyu broths typically have a ridiculous amount of sodium, not to mention grease. Most Japanese also don't drink the broth and I think they many would consider someone who did a bit low-class and gross. There are however some more recent health conscious places (often targeted at women) that serve smaller bowls of ramen with totally drinkable broth (usually vegetable or chicken based). I try to find those since I love the broth.

Right, Chinese are pretty much all new money (if they have money), so it’s a different cultural perception of wealth. My parents would get angry because my best friend’s parents would give me like $1000 in cash for my birthday aged 10, which they found ridiculous and unreasonable (and would make me share it with my siblings). But I came to understand that - for them - to give me a card and a chocolate bar, the kind of gift ten year olds might give each other, would have been insulting. Arab friends were similar. The point of wealth in non-Hajnali cultures is to share it with chosen acquaintances, friends and family for your own prestige and good fortune. It’s like that funny /r/Europe thing recently where the Scandinavians all said it would be weird to offer your kid’s friends who came to play after school dinner, because the custom is that the child should go home for food. Or the Dutch with their endless ‘tikkies’ for €3 coffees. Nobody in the Arab world or in China would ever split the bill for a coffee, or even dare to suggest it, the idea would seem ridiculous unless both people worked for a western company and it was some expenses thing (and even then, someone would just pay). It’s an honor to pay for another.

And yeah, eating ramen broth is often a bad idea, as delicious as it is.

I thought I could perhaps add some context here

No, don't, stop, you're only making it worse.

It's a cultural difference, it's fine. Cultures are weird, and that's what makes them fun, celebrate diversity and all that. If you try to provide additional explanations like "there's not enough potatoes" you'll just end up looking silly to people who make a fraction of your salary and have saying likes "where there's food for four, there's food for five".

I’m not scandinavian, but it seems to me there’s more to it than these practical considerations. Of course it’s not a question of a lack of generosity. But regularly feeding another family’s child goes against your aggressively egalitarian ethos, by marking one family as poor and the other as rich.

I still think your society is uncomfortable with gifts because it implies an unequal relationship and disturbs the law of jante, which also explains the going dutch and the rest of your peculiarities. And it’s just more fun to believe that, rather than your culture being particularly anal about eating times and potatoes.

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