--- airs weeknights on SBS Food at 7.00pm and 10.30pm, or stream it free on . Catch Jennifer Wong in the 'stolen goods' episode Thursday 24 April, or streaming any time after. ---
Is it ever okay to steal food, even if there’s a ‘good’ reason for it? Let’s say, your petty theft ended up granting you immortality? How about then?
Comedian recently discovered the thieving truth about a food story from her Chinese culture. As she tells SBS, learning the controversial facts about the stolen ‘longevity peach’ in Chinese mythology rocked her world.
“When you go into a Chinese restaurant or a Chinese person’s home, you might see a set of three statutes – three male gods with beards standing at an altar,” says Wong. Sanxing are the gods of the three stars in Chinese mythology. They are the god of luck, prosperity and longevity.
“Now the god of longevity holds a peach in his left hand. This longevity peach is the reason why Chinese people eat buns that are filled with lotus paste, that are shaped to look like a peach at birthdays.”
So it's not like it's just some random guy that found a peach, ate it and then had longevity forever more. He actually stole a peach from someone and then lived 18,000 years because of it.
According to the where Wong acquired the story, the God of Longevity – Shouxing – was "a wise and humorous official" who served under Han Dynasty Emperor Wudi (156-87 BCE).
“Legend has it he actually stole longevity peaches that took 3,000 years to grow from the Queen Mother of the West [on the Kunlun Mountains in north-west China]. So it's not like it's just some random guy that found a peach, ate it and then had longevity forever more. He actually stole a peach from someone and then lived 18,000 years because of it.
“Meanwhile, I'm wondering what happened to the Queen Mother and her peaches? Did she end up dying early because he ate all her peaches?”
While Wong jokes about the matter, she’s also surprised by the peach fiasco, given her personal cultural connection to the statue.
“I just could not believe it! All this time, I have looked at this [deity] holding a peach in one hand, smiling serenely. Meanwhile, he was a thief. My only hope is that I do not have years taken off my life for making this controversial statement.”
Photo of a statue of Shouxing holding the longevity peach, taken at the Art Gallery of NSW's exhibition 'The Way We Eat'. Source: Jennifer Wong
Stolen or shared?
While it’s a tough job to determine the justice of the stolen longevity peach, Wong translates the ancient notion of stolen goods into the current age with talk of stolen dishes versus shared recipes.
So Wong asks: is it okay to cook someone’s recipe and modify the dish if you have no cultural connection to the cuisine?
“One way to look at this is to think about the difference between what a home cook does in their home kitchen and what a chef does in their restaurant,” explains Wong, host of the documentary Chopsticks Or Fork?
“If I've decided to make a Mexican feast at home and I've tried my best to follow a recipe that comes from a book where the author has explained why ingredients are used in a particular way, and my cooking comes from a position of respect, then that’s fine.”
What’s not fine is racism or cultural appropriation, she says. “There’s an issue when a chef takes a dish from a culture that’s not their own and passes it off as something they've invented or put a twist on.”
The amount of skill that we bring to each recipe means that we are all responsible for the crappiness of our own individual attempts at cooking.
Good food is all about generosity
Wong stars in to make a . Obviously the dish is not from her Chinese culture and yet she is circulating a recipe for the meal on television and online.
Wong admits to ‘stealing’ the Sri Lankan recipe for dahl from the cookbook, by and Melbourne-based chef .
However, she openly attributes the two chefs behind her blended recipe and intentionally celebrates the heritage of the dish.
She also acknowledges that her modest cooking skills aren’t enough to challenge any chef. “The amount of skill that we bring to each recipe means that we are all responsible for the crappiness of our own individual attempts at cooking. An optimistic way of looking at that is ‘the only way is up’. If you keep perfecting a recipe, maybe one day you'll have a killer dish.
“But until then, I think all the cookbook writers should relax and know that there are a lot of people out there who aren't good cooks. When it comes to food, I just think generosity is a really good value to have. Good food is delicious so why not share recipes around?”
