TAU Far-east conference : day 2

(Previous post about the first day of the conference can be found here)

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After spending the night over at my friend’s house out in the countryside (Givat Coach), I drove back to Tel Aviv for the second day of the Tel Aviv University far-east conference.

I got there just in time for a panel called “Food and medicine in east-Asia” hosted by the Hebrew University’s head of far-east division – Gidi Selach.

Gidi opened up with a lecture from an archeological perspective – “Who rode the horses and who ate them? Food and ethnical/gender identity in the first millennium BC pre-north-China”. Mainly through examining graves that have been preserved to the present day Gadi was showing statistics about the kind of animals that people were buried with, which through examining the parts of the animal laid might suggest a pre-burial ceremony that involved eating those animals. Some graves had horses buried with them, but of those graves all were always men. The local identity, back at those days, could be seen and experienced through the bronze tools and accessories that were places around the skeletons suggesting their roles, their importance and the fashion – necklaces, hair decoration.

Michal Biran, also of the Hebrew University, was interested in “Mongolian nutrition – From mice and dogs to a fusion kitchen”, talking about how the Mongolian menu evolved with and has influenced the Mongolian history. Mongolians ate just about every possible part of their accessible animals – mainly sheep but also camels and horses. She also showed examples of preserved and soda milk, drinking blood off living animals that can withstand blood loss, soup cooking (hotpots), and also mentioning the un-proven cannibalism that was claimed by the Europeans . Due to Gingis Khan’s conquests menu has changed into something more international, and Mongolian empire was how Asia became so noodle-oriented.

This is when something a bit weird happened.
While I was in the very small town of Hoi An in Vietnam, for about 2 months, I felt like I was pretty much the only western guy staying there for more than just a few days. After about a month in HoiAn, my friend Willow asked me if I know the other Israelis who are living there. Confused, I asked her to give them a note I wrote next time she sees them, and through Willow we set up to meet for a Saturday night dinner with the Israeli family who’s there. From the little I was told, I gathered that a guy called Nir has lived in HoiAn for more than 2 years doing his PhD on Vietnamese food and was now there with his family to visit old friends.
Two weeks ago, searching through Asian universities and Israeli research on Asia, I suddenly remembered Nir and searched my mail box, and have managed to find his niece’s email – Reut, who I went together with Willow to a Kareoke night with. She was happy to give me Nir’s address and when I emailed him he told me that we could talk after some conference he’s in. That’s when I gathered he’s going to the same conference I am.

Nir gave what I consider to be the best lecture I heard that whole day – “Dog meat and the bird’s singing : the politics of the Vietnamese male”. With no fancy smancy powerpoint he gave a new fresh perspective on things I saw in HoiAn but didn’t really understand. It seems that when he was doing his PhD in Vietnam, a while back, there were 2 underground pubs in HoiAn which were a bit sluty and serving dog meat to a very male clientele. Most Vietnamese, back then but even today, are a bit repulsed by that concept and consider that to be a Northern-Communist influence, perhaps brought in from China. When he met me in Vietnam a year back, he noticed that those two underground restaurants have developed into 40 (!!) very out in the open dog-meat restaurants in almost every corner of the small HoiAn village. He also noticed changes in the way Vietnamese youth is spending there time, some “retiring” to their self-constructed gardens, which is a costume for old people or those against local rule. Puzzled, he asked his friends there to try and understand what was happening and came up with a theory about Northern-Communist political influences and the conflict the middle-Vietnam Vietnamese males are faced with. “For I was blind, and now I can see”, it’s interesting hearing interpretations like that to things I’ve seen myself but couldn’t quite explain since my own knowledge and my communication with the locals were very limited. Whether his theory is right or not – it’s quite extraordinary.

(TAU Far-east conference lecture summary can be found here)