To eat or not to eat

I’ve never been a foodie and was an annoyingly picky eater as a child. Primary school days were simple when I had coco pops for breakfast and vegemite sandwiches for lunch for seven years. You can’t say I wasn’t easy to please! I wouldn’t eat macaroni cheese, or porridge, or mushrooms, or celery, or beetroot, certainly not olives, and colourful food did not appeal. My earliest memory is choking on a bean so what would become a delicious green vegetable was never a favourite food when I was a child. I was a nightmare for my mother but she didn’t push the issue. My father tried on a couple of occasions by telling me I couldn’t leave the table until I’d eaten whatever it was in front of me that I had no intention of eating. I won by endurance every time.

In my thirties I moved to Hong Kong to start a new adventure. Just walking to work was an exciting experience, seeing the street food vendors plying their trade and the punters who couldn’t get enough. I marvelled at people who could eat off the street without a care in the world, nibbling on durian or deep fried chicken feet on the way to work. The aromas emanating from these itinerant one-man stalls did not convince me that I was missing out. At lunchtimes, my Chinese colleagues would ask me what I wanted on their lunch run. They wouldn’t wait when they replied for me, ‘Chicken chow mein or beef in black bean sauce?’ and walked off giggling into their hands. They instinctively knew — no stinky tofu, congee or century egg for me.

It was with much trepidation then, that I spent my first work trip to China almost having a panic attack at what I was expected to eat one evening at a group dinner. This was not the same as being at home where you could not eat what you wanted with no judgement. This was peer pressure of the highest level. Eating what was served would garner great acceptance and respect among one’s colleagues and the hosts. This was not a time to reject food on the basis of looks. The first dish was a large plate of what looked like cockroaches. Next came a meal that looked very much like maggots. When I politely asked our host what the dishes were, he said: ‘I don’t know the name in English but they are found in the harbour — they are delicious!’ Despite the peer pressure, I spent most of the trip eating fried rice. From then on, mushrooms and olives started to look pretty good.