Rice has a place in Chinese hearts, whether we eat it or not

Years ago, I was invited to speak in Bali about the significance of rice to the Chinese. At first, I wondered whether there was enough to say about something so ordinary. Once I began writing, however, the words poured out like water from a broken dam. The talk, delivered in a pavilion overlooking emerald rice paddies, turned out to be my most engaging.

There was far more to rice than I had imagined. In China, it occupies a special place in the national imagination, somewhere between food and faith.

Nai, my beloved grandmother, treated every grain with reverence. Whenever my siblings and I left a few grains in our bowls, she would urge us to finish them. Every grain, she reminded us, represented countless hours of labour in the fields. Sometimes she resorted to a more colourful warning. “Finish your rice,” she would say, “or you’ll end up marrying someone with a pockmarked face.”

As a child, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be frightened. What I did understand was that rice was precious. In Mao Zedong’s China, food was never taken for granted. My grandparents had experienced famine; my parents had endured chronic scarcity. To waste food was not merely careless. It was wrong.

The importance of rice is reflected in language. Traditionally, one common greeting is not “How are you?” but literally “Have you eaten rice?” A “rice bowl” is the usual metaphor for one’s livelihood or income. A “rice bucket” describes someone who only has the capacity to eat. And when Chinese people say “raw rice has been cooked”, they mean that what is done cannot be undone.