I admit I have a fetish for Dim Sum. I like dim sum a lot. And this morning, I ate at a restaurant Kai Loon recommended - Hong Kee. No, this will not be a post with pictures of dim sum and food, rather, it will be a post with cultural musings, and thoughts about life.

Eating dim sum is all about small bites. Because they are delicacies, they are served in small servings - usually with only 3 items per basket. In most dim sum parlors, people spend hours on end, eating a few small baskets of dim sum. Reason? They take it with small bites, lots of cups of tea in between, and most importantly, talk.

In the past, I used to eat a lot of dim sum (as in many baskets) - simply because I didn’t know how to appreciate the food. To me, it’s tiny servings (which when eaten slowly, can be very filling) is too small for me, and I eat a lot - it usually ends with a bloated stomach, with a feeling of wanting to hurl. But now, I try to eat slower, and take smaller bites.

I guess life is something like that. Except that you have a that you have to finish. You cannot eat all in one gulp. If you eat too fast, you end up eating less. The only way is to take smaller bites, but more bites. Face a problem, one at a time. Solve them. If you cannot solve them, get help to solve them. Or break the problem down to smaller bites.

Take your time. Take small bites at the problem consistently, and before you know it, your problems are over.

Back to the cultural beginnings of dim sum. After the Manchurian people invaded China, the Qing Dynasty (not to be confused with the First Emperor’s Dynasty, Qin) was founded, the young offspring of the Warrior Caste can be compared to today’s rich brats. With their parents in power and very rich, they had nothing to do. So they cultivated some cultural habits, such as eating small delicacies - dim sum, and watching birds (they didn’t have E! TV then) and et cetera.

They’d spend their times socializing in dim sum parlors. Their interest was not in the food, but in talking, and tea drinking. So they took small bites, and a basket of dim sum can last hours. Interesting how some socialite habit can evolve to something cultural today.

Heh, I guess 200 years in the future, Paris Hilton’s partying ways may be a precedent for something deemed ‘cultural’ - not that America has any culture in the first place. Culture-wise, America is probably the most uncivilized nation (no, the MTV coca cola culture is not my thing). Heh.

Oh well.

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