Food is Heaven

Food is Heaven

2006, Society  -   5 Comments
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Ratings: 8.10/10 from 49 users.

As scarcity and desolation stalks the land, an expert chef is looking for the greatest meal, a student is challenging his father to pursue his dreams and rebellious advocate battles the plants and their grime that is eating up the province. An ancient proverb says - "food is heaven", but in its blitz to abundance, is China consuming its capability to feed its own population? Of all the places in this empire, none is as active as a Cantonese kitchen.

Food insane Guangzhou is a growing city of 10 million people and 10,000 restaurants. Magician of the wok, Johnson Wong, assures his chefs stay on the forefront of the city's unusual cuisine.

This city is the place of China's legendary export: Cantonese food... although some of it might be hard to sell worldwide. Anything that flies in the air or walks on the land, as long as its behind is facing the sky, you can consume it. They attribute enormous attention to the freshness of food. Cantonese people adore to eat. They eat almost anything, and the closer it is to being alive, the better.

Goose web, fish lips, all sorts of bugs... Wong is kept engaged making up dishes for his wealthy and ambitious sponsors. He'll try anything. Like filling insects into bean sprouts... bees... bee pupae. If you don't consume them, they will literally fly away. And when he's not operating his restaurants, he's occupied with his weekly TV show. For Wong, food is amusement... exactly. TV series, radio shows, newspapers, columns, food conferences have made Wong high ranking celebrity cook.

Wong's food is all devoured up by the newly affluent Chinese, by those who have more food than they appreciate what to do with it. People are demanding new taste perceptions. They no longer see food as something to satisfy hunger. But on the other side of China, hunger is not old news.

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Lynley Ruth Butt
Lynley Ruth Butt
10 years ago

Looks like my iPad has given up telling me it can't oblige me by getting these doc films . I'm talking about here in Pakistan... Where You Tube I shut down... And there is talk hat Karachi has twitter and Facebook and mobile phone SMS es shut down too... " for Security Reasons". I suspect it is for a dirty of security trained to sift through forms of modern tech in the info age... Just haven't caught up here,
Why not? Feudal fuddy- duddies don't wanna deal with the unleashed rising expectations of a middle class... The anarchist lower escalions already tease them enough... Almost to the point of a war of the aggrieved and dissatisfied against the prevailing form of Laissez Faire Established " pecking and perks " Order Governance and Status Quo pay scales . Based upon glaring ugly, verging on wantonly and desperately catastrophic class barrier disparities.

SecretWay
SecretWay
10 years ago

I love how that guy just scraped the carp with he´s nails..
Dirty nails...digging deep in that fish.. and then finally serv it to
friends and family..

megatron_mcdaniels
megatron_mcdaniels
10 years ago

so...eating people is wrong?

bringmeredwine
bringmeredwine
10 years ago

Here's the China I always imagine in my mind, not streets brimming with shopping malls and boutiques, but a polluted mess.
This doc interested me because it has geography, cooking and the environment all rolled into one.
I wonder how the advocates for the peasants are making out now, 7 years later, and if the Communist Party got rid of them.