In the last post I left with the announcement that scrambled eggs with tomatoes is our national dish. In the second part, I'll show you the reasons why such announcement was made one by one, like the way Premiere Hu was inspecting the marching troops at the Tiananman Square on October 1st.
There's so many ways for me to begin the inquisition but first off, I must highlight our penchant for the color red and yellow as a nation -- just in case you've no clue of how our flag is like.
Red is, to a large extent, in every Chinese's blood. Historically, red is the color we used to get rid of evil spirit, which explains why the pillars and walls of the palaces are all painted red. Over times, the symbolic value of red gets richer and it equates the color for fortune and joy, to which is why the principle color for lanterns, couplets and jianzhi used in festivals are red. In most parts of China, parents still insist the bride to wear red dress in the wedding banquet (in stark contrast to the West, we wear white clothes during the mourning time).
Then, ever since the dawn of Chairman Mao and the Communist's reign, red has become the underlying color for the Communist party (and the Red Guards). It is also said that the red color in our flag represents the blood shed by mortars who died in the battles for our country.
Yellow on the other hand, not only has been associated with wealth and harmony, but it has been the center color for us since the founding of our totem. It is still not uncommon to refer us as the "yellow" people in usages similar to that of the "black" or "white" people from the past.
At the core of our rapture for yellow, it can also be attributed to the fact we all regard ourselves to the descendant of Yan & Yellow Emperor (Huangdi). Moreover, yellow also unmistakably manifests the color for generations of emperor. Up until the Qing dynasty, yellow clothes was strictly reserved for the imperial uses and commons were forbidden to dress anything in yellow. Each emperor would get a new, bright yellow dragon robe (longpao) on the day of his enthronement; with nine flying dragons embroidered on that. For reason unknown to fashion designers nowadays, the dragons are also painted in yellow [edit: only the dragons for emperor is allowed to be five-clawed; the dragons for the rest are either four or three-clawed so to attest that he's born as the Son of Heaven ]
And lest we forget, the Yellow River is also said to be the Mother River of China and the cradle of Chinese civilization.
Second, we shall examine the ingredient itself.
The reason why so many people fail to see why scrambled eggs and tomatoes deserves to be come to the fore is that they fail to see the mighty collective fixation our race has on eggs through this dish like I do. Believe it or not, we heart eggs, or dan in Mandarin and we heart it no less than a French loves cheese. We love it so much so that we must spell and recite the word everyday to put us at peace. For example, we have huangbadan for son of a bitch; bendan for fool; huaidan for douche; qiongquadan for stony-broke person; and last but not least, if we want to ask someone to fuck off politely, we'd ask him/her to gundan. Putting scrambled eggs with tomatoes to the altar in front of Chairman Mao's portrait would be without a question the ultimate way to honor such collective fixation.
But semantic isn't the only reason why we love eggs. Chinese mythology has it that, the first living being of the universe, Pangu, was born inside a cosmic egg in the very beginning of time. The upper half of the egg formed the Heaven (yang) and the lower half became the Earth (ying).
Nay-sayers, by now, would probably be roiled and say my benevolent dictatorship is unjust since for them there's hundreds other dishes like mantou, hand-pulled noodles, Chinese flatbread (xiaobing) or even the Peking duck can give my decision a run for its money. But is there any dish that has diverged better than scrambled eggs and tomatoes, which seemingly bypassed every geographical and ethnical barriers?
Third, the most cardinal argument from me is, the image of the dish mirrors that of our flag -- as though the margherita pizza mirrors that of a Italian flag and the white-feathered Bresse chicken of Bény of a French flag. Well, whether you like it or not, I'm of the persuasion that the most beautiful thing in China is that patriotism will always go first and you don't need to listen to what people say unless you really feel like it. It's time to kiss the eggs and celebrate the national day with it!
