I went for my sister's company dinner at one of those opulent Chinese restaurants last Sunday. My gosh, some of our rich Chinese people are such extravagant and wasteful consumers. They ordered the best of everything - shark fins soup, two different type of abalone dish, giant shitake mushrooms measuring 5cm in diameter, tiger prawns, yam basket with cashew nuts, sea cucumber with pak choy in oyster sauce, crab sticks, friend rice with prawns, and lychee dessert. The bill came up to RM750.00. Everything was 'liao' - filing. We Chinese fill up on the multitude of dishes, while Malays consume more rice than 'fillings'. What appalled me the most were the leftovers. There were half a mound of fried rice and shitake mushrooms left and it was not doggy-bagged but rather thrown away, and how I know it was thrown away? Dirty plates and tissues were dumped into said plates when the waitresses came to clear our plates away for the desserts. Me and my sister just looked at each other... can't very well gainsay the boss lady when she had already given the silent directive.
So is it our innate culture to spend money needlessly so that you can 'save face' in front of your friends and subordinates? All such rich food in great quantity enough to feed an army. Heck the leftovers were enough for two adults and then some. This reminds me of Shu Qi the Empress Dowager of China who had 128 kind of dishes prepared for her daily dinner but she only ate a few of her favourite dishes. Nothing but a show of power; 'show' being the operative word.
No comments:
Post a Comment