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Is there culture in a bowl of noodles?
By Wang Yong |
August 11, 2009, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IT'S unsavory to justify the high price of noodles sold in the Palace Museum in Beijing by conjuring culture out of them.
The Palace Museum would not have come under public fire and satire for its expensive noodles had it simply said it was a matter of cost and branding. But the Palace Museum went out of its way to explain that their noodles were not just noodles, they were culture, so they had to be expensive.
On August 6, the Palace Museum opened a 1,400-square-meter shopping area within its ancient walls. A restaurant named after the museum in the area, opened two days later, was found to be selling noodles for 30 yuan (US$4.4) a bowl, about triple the normal price asked in most ordinary restaurants outside the museum.
Were the ingredients of the Palace Museum noodles part of the secrets of the 600-year-old museum that dated back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)? Managers of the museum did not say, choosing instead to use the vague concept of culture to defend the noodle price, according to a report on August 7 in the Beijing Times.
The concept of culture was vague enough - was it a noodle culture or an imperial culture at large?
If it were a noodle culture, what's special about the Palace Museum noodles? When were they invented? Few had heard of them until this month.
If it were an imperial culture the Palace Museum stands for, what would be the price of any product bearing this culture? Indeed, one may well argue that 30 yuan for a bowl of the Palace Museum noodles is too cheap. Such a bowl of noodles should be priceless given the incalculable value of the Palace Museum.
If culture were to determine the price of a commodity, "made-in-China" would probably be the most expensive in the world, given that the Chinese culture is one of the oldest civilizations that has been well preserved to the present.
Seeking profit
The price of the Palace Museum noodles thus has nothing to do with culture. It's just an attempt by the owners and managers of the 1,400-square-meter shopping area to seek - squeeze indeed - as much profit as possible in the market economy in which they find themselves.
But the attempt failed, at least on the first day of business. Beijing Times quoted a restaurant manager as saying "customer flow was below expectation." The newspaper quoted a tourist as saying: "However much culture there's in the noodles, we won't eat them."
Business is business, don't stretch and sprinkle culture over it, especially when one doesn't understand culture.
Blaming Starbucks
In 2007, Starbucks closed its outlet in the Palace Museum amid the cries of some Chinese people to protest at Starbucks' "trampling upon traditional Chinese culture." Young CCTV anchorman Rui Chenggang, who usually speaks with pressed lips and squinted eyes to assume an air of sophistication and authority, was one of the most vocal in denouncing Starbucks' existence in the Palace Museum.
In an 2007 blog article, Rui wrote: "It is not about globalization, it is about erosion of Chinese culture." Pity he didn't explain what Chinese culture was.
The 5,000-year-old Chinese culture was more than the Palace Museum could stand for. On the whole, Chinese culture is open and inclusive, while the Palace Museum actually stood for Ming and Qing dynasties which were very much closed. At any rate, Starbucks couldn't have got into the museum without the latter's agreement. Even if Starbucks were suspected of "cultural erosion," it took two hands to clap. It was weird that Rui and his like only yelled at Starbucks in a stream of nationalistic blubbers.
Now that Starbucks is away, will Chinese vendors of noodles inside the museum save Chinese culture? Honesty is key to Chinese culture, but are those noodle vendors honest by coloring their profit-seeking motives with a cultural coat? Does anyone who eats a bowl of such noodles have a taste of Chinese culture?
Making quick profits has become a norm in most tourist sites the world over, a norm that has less to do with culture than with modern business codes. In this sense, Starbucks and noodle vendors are alike, except in nationality.
Business is business, it seeks to maximize profits. When every business is doing this shamelessly, you feel ashamed at not being shameless - to borrow a sentence from The Confessions of Saint Augustine.
The Palace Museum would not have come under public fire and satire for its expensive noodles had it simply said it was a matter of cost and branding. But the Palace Museum went out of its way to explain that their noodles were not just noodles, they were culture, so they had to be expensive.
On August 6, the Palace Museum opened a 1,400-square-meter shopping area within its ancient walls. A restaurant named after the museum in the area, opened two days later, was found to be selling noodles for 30 yuan (US$4.4) a bowl, about triple the normal price asked in most ordinary restaurants outside the museum.
Were the ingredients of the Palace Museum noodles part of the secrets of the 600-year-old museum that dated back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)? Managers of the museum did not say, choosing instead to use the vague concept of culture to defend the noodle price, according to a report on August 7 in the Beijing Times.
The concept of culture was vague enough - was it a noodle culture or an imperial culture at large?
If it were a noodle culture, what's special about the Palace Museum noodles? When were they invented? Few had heard of them until this month.
If it were an imperial culture the Palace Museum stands for, what would be the price of any product bearing this culture? Indeed, one may well argue that 30 yuan for a bowl of the Palace Museum noodles is too cheap. Such a bowl of noodles should be priceless given the incalculable value of the Palace Museum.
If culture were to determine the price of a commodity, "made-in-China" would probably be the most expensive in the world, given that the Chinese culture is one of the oldest civilizations that has been well preserved to the present.
Seeking profit
The price of the Palace Museum noodles thus has nothing to do with culture. It's just an attempt by the owners and managers of the 1,400-square-meter shopping area to seek - squeeze indeed - as much profit as possible in the market economy in which they find themselves.
But the attempt failed, at least on the first day of business. Beijing Times quoted a restaurant manager as saying "customer flow was below expectation." The newspaper quoted a tourist as saying: "However much culture there's in the noodles, we won't eat them."
Business is business, don't stretch and sprinkle culture over it, especially when one doesn't understand culture.
Blaming Starbucks
In 2007, Starbucks closed its outlet in the Palace Museum amid the cries of some Chinese people to protest at Starbucks' "trampling upon traditional Chinese culture." Young CCTV anchorman Rui Chenggang, who usually speaks with pressed lips and squinted eyes to assume an air of sophistication and authority, was one of the most vocal in denouncing Starbucks' existence in the Palace Museum.
In an 2007 blog article, Rui wrote: "It is not about globalization, it is about erosion of Chinese culture." Pity he didn't explain what Chinese culture was.
The 5,000-year-old Chinese culture was more than the Palace Museum could stand for. On the whole, Chinese culture is open and inclusive, while the Palace Museum actually stood for Ming and Qing dynasties which were very much closed. At any rate, Starbucks couldn't have got into the museum without the latter's agreement. Even if Starbucks were suspected of "cultural erosion," it took two hands to clap. It was weird that Rui and his like only yelled at Starbucks in a stream of nationalistic blubbers.
Now that Starbucks is away, will Chinese vendors of noodles inside the museum save Chinese culture? Honesty is key to Chinese culture, but are those noodle vendors honest by coloring their profit-seeking motives with a cultural coat? Does anyone who eats a bowl of such noodles have a taste of Chinese culture?
Making quick profits has become a norm in most tourist sites the world over, a norm that has less to do with culture than with modern business codes. In this sense, Starbucks and noodle vendors are alike, except in nationality.
Business is business, it seeks to maximize profits. When every business is doing this shamelessly, you feel ashamed at not being shameless - to borrow a sentence from The Confessions of Saint Augustine.
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