The West has built a lot of myths about China that we바카라ve all swallowed without demur. That China was for centuries the dominant Asian power and is now merely trying to recover that lost status is one such. What is this if not a self-serving distortion바카라a way to cloak new hegemonic ambitions in victim tones! Pray, in what way did China ever 바카라dominate바카라 India? And if it never did so, how was it the dominant Asian power? Surely, India is a part of Asia, though now 바카라Asian바카라 in popular parlance excludes those from the subcontinent.
In reality, Indian civilisation owes nothing to China, whereas China is heavily marked by a reverse civilisational flow. Years ago, on my first visit to New York바카라s Metropolitan Museum, I was struck by some magnificent Buddhist art, and mused wonderingly about their provenance, until I discovered it was Chinese art! Even in Southeast Asia, the Indian imprint is far more marked than the Chinese, despite the geographical contiguity. At the Musee Guimet in Paris, which houses art from Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos et al, one immediately enters the Indian civilisational world바카라Hindu or Buddhist or a curious admixture of the two. Where is a 바카라Chinese바카라 equivalent of Angkor Vat or Borobudur? In my own visits to Beijing, Luoyang and so on, the India connection is palpable. There바카라s no such legacy of Han China in India.
The Chinese swallow all sorts of things, including, as in the Doklam plateau, land belonging to others, believing perhaps that creepy-crawlies are abundant there! It바카라s a teasing question whether societies that observe many food taboos are not more evolved civilisationally. And conversely, whether those that lean towards culinary laissez-faire are somehow closer to a primordial state. By this metric, China doesn바카라t seem very high up on the civilisational ladder.
On earlier visits, I바카라d missed visiting the open market close to the Imperial Palace in the heart of Beijing, where a long line of stalls바카라a few hundred metres in length바카라offers you choice Chinese delicacies like scorpions, snakes, silkworms, centipedes, crickets and such like for your delectation. My son, on temporary assignment in Beijing, is the one who told me of these al fresco goodies. He바카라d recced them for what he could swallow without puking and had chosen a scorpion바카라these, incidentally, are alive and moving their limbs in slow-motion before being roasted바카라and pronounced the morsel was not without taste. Well, the young are more open and curious and willing to be adventurous. The older you get, the more circumspect you become. Even the idea of visiting the place seemed a bit revolting, but the grotesque does fascinate바카라which is why many people like horror films바카라so I went.
I was truly surprised this kind of fare was available in the city centre and not confined to some inner city hangouts, hidden from the judgemental gaze of foreigners. But no, it바카라s there바카라virtually rubbing shoulders with Tiananmen Square. For the Olympics, they바카라d made a special effort to get folks to stop spitting in public and erase dog-meat from restaurant menus. The Chinese are so image-conscious that they banned a James Bond film just because a sequence was filmed in the old quarters of Shanghai and not around its glossy skyscrapers that probably create traffic jams for the local avian population. How come the ban didn바카라t extend to the creepy-crawlies?
Years of tremendous growth means China바카라s vast population eats to its fill바카라scorpions and centipedes are hardly needed to augment the protein intake. Judged by the overflowing Peking Duck restaurants, one wouldn바카라t think protein deficiency is a problem in China. We had some difficulty in getting a table, but leaving Beijing without savouring lacquered duck garnished with spring onions, smeared with plum sauce and wrapped in thin crepes would have been like leaving Athens without seeing the Parthenon. Actually, I바카라ve had better Peking Duck outside China. One eats better Chinese food outside China, period. My last sojourn here, we were incessantly plied with Chinese food. I do like it, but after three or four bouts it ceases to flatter the taste buds. I don바카라t mean absence of spices바카라Šit just gets boring. The owners of the Chinese shoe shop in my area in Delhi visited their home town in southern China recently for the first time. They were greatly impressed by the cleanliness, but just couldn바카라t stomach the food and soon longed for the flavours back 바카라home바카라!
On one of my visits, a rendezvous at the Museum of Food figured in the programme. I was wondering how a museum of food was relevant to foreign policy, until I figured that it was a restaurant reviving traditional Chinese dishes. The presentation was superb, the first dish was offered in a carved wooden container, which I was asked to open as the senior guest present. Slugs too were offered, but their gluey texture required a palate more responsive than mine. We all have our McMahon lines.
The writer is a former foreign Âsecretary of India
