Who Inspired the Shanghai Superbrand Mall?

开水 or Hot Water

I've been trying to find an answer as to why Chinese people always drink hot water, regarding cold water as bad for health. My results thusfar have been poor (except for the awesome picture of the Chinese kettle lady), but here they are nonetheless.

1) Yahoo Answers! gives you a range of answers from the daft to the commonsensical, although none of them seem particularly compelling.

The best sounding?

in chinese medicine, they believe that drinking cold water will drain your energy because your body will have to use energy to warm it up. Where if you drink water that is body temperature, there is no energy loss.

I believe that and I dont like cold water. I drink at room temp and if you give me real cold water it feels like a shock to the system. Its only when you drink cold water a lot that you prefer it.

My favorite?

Hot water is good for you. It helps wash the food down. Cold water is not good for you.

Brilliant!

2) EthnoMed.org has this to say in relation to Chinese women giving birth:

When asked for a drink of water, women were offered ice chips instead of warm water that they prefer. Most Chinese women will endure the thirst for fear the cold water from ice chip will upset their internal hot/cold balance and subsequently increase their risk of developing arthritis in old age.

3) Jim Conrad's Musings On Water and Chinese etymology make a nice, yet admittedly impressionistic connection between water and the Chinese psyche.

4) This Breaking News suggests that hot water prevents heart attacks, but also sounds as if it were written by a seventh grader. (Note first sentence proclaiming, "This is a very good article.")

5) The best part to this small epiphany is framed by the blogger's description of himself: "With a keen eye and a penetrating mind I bring to you collections of my random thoughts that I believe are so clever and original that you might have thought them yourself and hence relate to this blog." (italics mine)

6) Perhaps the best source I've found (I think in part to my still developing Chinese), is this article from the Gansu Daily where I found Miss Teakettle. As far as I can tell, the article has something to do with drinking water only once after it's boiled, and not reusing it again or later due to the possibility of contamination. It begins:

大家都知道日常生活中多喝开水有益健康，可水怎么烧，开水怎么喝，还有不少讲究。

As best as I can translate: "Everybody knows in their everyday lives how drinking hot water is good for your health, but how should you boil it? How should you drink it? There are many things to be concerned about."

It's the first part of that sentence. "Everybody knows."

For the time being, I'm willing to keep on thinking that this connection between health and drinking hot water, like most conventions, is a matter of everyone accepting it's true.

"Everybody knows." Of course, they do.

Cilantro: The Weed that Divides Us

Bu-Ran-Don
Did you guys know that Ferret doesn't like cilantro?


I was recently confronted by my friends for the fact that I don't like cilantro. My friend Bu-Ran-Don was cooking some chorizo-cod, and adding cilantro to the mix. I commented that I don't like cilantro. Silence in the room. I don't think I've ever felt so persecuted for my taste in food. (Yes, not even the fact that I like durian has brought me such honest disdain.)

But yes -- cilantro -- I've never found it that appealing; it tastes a little like trash. However, as I think is well documented, I have a little bit of a masochistic streak when it comes to trash. Therefore, I'm willing to tolerate a bit of it in my food. Interestingly enough, there is a burgeoning portion of the population (1,777 at most recent count) that has been so infuriated by this weed that they have taken to the streets -- well, the virtual ones anyway.

I Hate Cilantro is such a community of cilantro haters. I think their vehemence is poignantly expressed by this picture from their website:



I was also pretty taken by their haiku section. My favorites:

This one by member Fairygreen:

Fondue so lovely
Wait, a bitter blow to tongue
A great meal ruined

Or this one (of many) by Popmusicguy:

Lucrezia Borgia
World famous for poisoning
Favored cilantro

Oh yeah, there's an anti-cilantro store as well, t-shirts, hats, the whole bit. Markets in everything. Care to vent your hatred, anyone? (Coriander is also available.)

Art of Endless Recursion

Ferret
I've been thinking a lot lately about art.

Honey
Yeah?

Ferret
I've been trying to figure out the role of gimmickry in art. I mean, I think art hinges on a gimmick of some type, but then goes beyond that gimmick. I can't stand how modern artists give us some gimmick and then refuse to explain it.

Honey
Well, some of them do.

Ferret
I know that, and I think it's good when they do, but you know that a lot of them don't. It's funny because people often talk about the kind of intellectualism and elitism that plagues contemporary art, but I think ultimately it's very democratic. An artist tries to make everyone an artist.

Honey
What d'you mean?

Ferret
I would argue that true art is defined by that moment where an artist takes a gimmick and then voices a specific interpretation, or creates a specific effect in the person perceiving the art. The effect of Rembrandt's use of shadow and light, for example. In the case of an open gimmick, where the interpretation is left to the viewer, they are suddenly required to participate as an artist, making the interpretation, taking whatever effect that they would like to from the art.

Honey
Yeah, but I don't know. I don't think that an artist is supposed to create a singular effect though their work. If they are able to produce a specific effect through their art, then that seems like a gimmick too. It means that there is no depth to the work at all. The great thing about art is that it doesn't limit itself to one particular form of expression.

Ferret
No, you are right, but there are works of art where this kind of open gimmick is focused on more timeless or general questions. Where the artist reveals something about the world, and doesn't haphazardly apply a gimmick.

Honey
But you have to take into account context. It might not necessarily be a function of the art or the artist. Take Duchamp's urinal for instance. That work of art has been reconstrued so many times beyond what could be considered Duchamp's original intentions as he defined them. It has unintentionally revealed something about the world.

Ferret
Didn't somebody try to smash it?

Honey
I think somebody did smash it.

Ferret
Probably some performance artist feeding off of Duchamp arguing that he redefined Duchamp. Can destruction be creative?

Honey
Well, I think so.

Ferret
I think so too, but I find it suffers from the same kinds of problems that I have with all creative or artistic endeavors. I certainly agree that it's worth while to take the piss out of Duchamp sometimes.

Honey
Ferret...

Ferret
I know, I should flush that one away, right?

Honey
Stop. Please.

Ferret
Okay, well, it seems we've come full circle. All of art may very well be gimmickry, but gimmickry may be a lot.

Honey
I think so, probably more than we realize. If anything, I think that art spins us in circles, from gimmick to gimmick, from one theory of aesthetic to another.

Ferret
So what then? Can we ever get outside of the loop?

Honey
Why do you want to get outside of it?

Ferret
Well, the whole thing seems to me to be a like an endless carousel where you are trying to make a judgment about the world around you, reflected in the mirrors, only to find that your perspective is constantly in flux. You get nauseous... I guess where I'm going with this is that I don't like carousels.

Honey
I don't blame you. I've always thought that they were hokey, and not too much fun to ride.

Ferret
I know, even when I was a kid, I didn't get them. Okay, maybe there's a better way to look at this whole art thing? What do you think?

Honey
I think so. How about this: I once had a dream where I was lost in this strange German beer hall, and I was trying to find the exit. It was so immense that I couldn't see any walls near me that might suggest an end or a way out. And the longer I walked, the more I realized that there was no end. I just kept walking along the rows of these long tables watching people eating and drinking and having sex. Every type of food, every type of drink was consumed by every kind of person I could imagine, breaking now and then into orgiastic furor. Suddenly, when I came to the realization that there was no end to it all, all of these people began dancing on the tables wildly, failing their arms and legs as if they were trying to exhaust every possibility of movement, every orientation of their bodies. I could see patterns of dances coming through like waves from tables beyond my vision. The people would come together in these new dances for several moments, and then as they dissipated, return to their continual flailing, only to receive a new dance a moment later. I watched this for a while, until finally I asked one of the dancers why they wouldn't stop dancing. He said, "We have to dance. If we don't dance now, we will die." I think that art in general moves just like those dances that I saw. It is what drives us forward without apology. It is the one thing that continues to animate us to something beyond ourselves.

Ferret
I do like that idea. But would we really die without art? Without its continual redefinitions?

Honey
I don't know if we'd die literally, but I think it's an essential part of our selves. We can't imagine existing without it.

Ferret
So you're saying that I'm stuck on the carousel?

Honey
I think so.

Ferret
Dammit.