It’s important to do research if you’re going to another country, especially if you’re doing business there. You have a responsibility to know the ways of the culture. What if someone from Malaysia comes here? Should they shake our hands? I think generally it’s good to practice house rules, to make an effort to adopt local customs. But it’s also good to be flexible when it comes to our expectations of people from abroad.
When it comes to food, I never want to be an ugly American, but I also don’t want to end up in a hospital, if only for psychological reasons. I’ve had some very disquieting food experiences, and they have seriously tested my ability to be a gracious guest. Let me tell you a little about how I wound up in Korea and Japan, and then I’ll tell you about things crawling off my plate.
Parsons developed academic options abroad called Two Plus Two Affiliate Programs, whereby students would spend two years at a Parsons affiliate abroad followed by two years at Parsons in New York. I was flying somewhere in Asia once a month for eight years, and for example, I was not permitted to visit Seoul, South Korea, and Kanazawa, Japan, on the same trip, because culturally it would be insulting to each party to reveal that you were traveling for any business other than theirs. You’d like to think you could just pretend you’d arrived fresh from New York City, but they would find out. I learned a great deal about homage and ego in these cultures.
And the food did occasionally scare me. At one dinner in Korea at a Japanese restaurant called the Great Wall, a plate came out with something on it that looked like a big Tootsie Roll. I was looking at it and waiting for everyone to be served before beginning. And as I was contemplating it, it started to squirm its way off the plate. It was a live sea slug.
I waited for it to squirm completely off the plate and reach the table. Then I put my plate on top of it and casually leaned on it. If I was even going to think about eating it, I had to kill it first. But then I realized I could leave it under there, and it would look like I’d cleaned my plate. The person who came to clear noticed the flattened slug under my plate, but he politely picked it up and carried it off.
My general rule of thumb is that if it’s alive, it shouldn’t be any bigger than an oyster. And it should not have eyes. And it shouldn’t be able to walk off your plate under its own steam.
When I was in Kanazawa, I took a stroll in the seafood market and couldn’t believe how expensive everything was. I saw a $5,000 crab! The dean of Parsons and I were taken to a seafood meal by a group of businessmen who were part of the Chamber of Commerce. There was a man-made stream running through the restaurant and an aquarium by the entrance full of tiny goldfish. While we were waiting, people on line were reaching into the aquarium and popping these little fish in their mouths—like Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, only alive.
At the table, a whole fish was presented to us ceremoniously. The waiter took what looked like an eye-drop bottle that we’re told was filled with sake. He dropped a little into the fish’s mouth, and the fish, which was flayed, mind you, started to writhe. I was horrified, but I did have one happy thought. I leaned over to my colleague and said, “Remember when you were asked yesterday if you’d rather go to the seafood restaurant or the beef restaurant? Thank you for saying the seafood one. Can you imagine what they’d do to a cow?”
The bill was $7,000 for six of us. Evidently in the Japanese culture people live modestly except when it comes to going out. Torturing fish with sake drops isn’t cheap.
But it brings up an important question: How polite does one have to be? After bearing witness to its torment, I couldn’t eat the fish. Fortunately, in the Asian culture there are usually several courses, so you can bow out of the ones that scare you and say, “Thank you, but I think I will save myself for the next atrocity.”
For the record, I know people eat insects in certain cultures, and I am much more okay with that than with the writhing live animals. I’ll go with a bug over a mammal any day. At least they don’t look you in the eye.
Also, for the record, I’m not against eating animals. I wear leather and I eat meat, but I draw the line at inhumane fur. I’ve worked with PETA to help educate the public about it. I say, know where your food comes from, and take responsibility for it. I’m no zealot; I just think we should be as humane as possible, and when it comes to fur, there are alternatives.
I got involved with PETA because Parsons was inviting the International Fur Trade Federation to speak, and I thought the students needed to hear the other side. I don’t think fur is always bad. I visited a Saga Furs of Scandinavia fur farm in Denmark, where they raise fox and mink in an ethical way. I always say, if you absolutely must have a fur, make sure Saga is the fur source. They have bred the animals’ natural instincts out of them over time so their foxes and minks are basically domesticated and have a very happy life before they become stoles.
I really do understand vegetarianism, even though I’m a failure at it.
In college I was so traumatized by the slaughterhouse scene in James Agee’s short story “A Mother’s Tale” that I became an instant vegetarian. I swore off meat. It repulsed me.
Then, several months later, I was feeling weak, and a voice from within said, “I need meat! I need it immediately!”
I went to the local grocery store, ran to the packaged meat section, grabbed a package of bologna, and ate the whole thing standing there in the aisle. Then I paid for the empty container. I proudly help PETA with their antifur campaign, but they know they’re not going to make a vegan out of me. And yet they still named me their 2009 Man of the Year (Ellen DeGeneres was their Woman of the Year) because of my crusade against abuse in the fur trade.
Vegetarianism can make for social awkwardness at times, especially if you’re at an event where only hunks of meat are served. You may think this is rare, but vegetarian friends tell me that it does happen. In those situations it really is a question of just eating enough not to insult the host.
One person I know was at a fancy luncheon at which they were serving venison and nothing else. There was no way to get around it, so he ate it. I am very impressed that his manners trumped his feelings. I don’t even know if I could have gone there, because I have a psychological aversion to the meat of animals I find especially adorable, like deer—the same goes for rabbit, lamb, and veal. My gag reflex kicks in. But I am very much a believer in not insulting a host, so perhaps I would have been able to choke down Bambi had it come to that.
Parsons used to have a lovely graduation at Riverside Church with a lunch afterward, to which we invited our honorary degree recipients. One year two of our guests were Sister Parish and Albert Hadley of Parish-Hadley, the legendary interior design firm. I was sitting at Mrs. Parish’s table, and she was an incredible character. I said, “You must receive lots of awards and accolades,” and she said, “No, this is the first since I was given a perfect-attendance medal as a young girl. It came with a pig.”
Well, this award did not come with a pig. It came with a very odd lunch of sea scallops that I was pretty sure were raw. Sister Parish corroborated this when someone asked her, “How’s lunch?”
“Terribly chic,” she replied, “but inedible.”
As much as I believe it’s good manners to eat what’s put in front of you as long as it won’t send you into anaphylactic shock, I also believe that, when a host, you really need to think about what will suit your guests. I think it’s bizarre when you assume no one is a vegetarian or has an allergy. It doesn’t hurt to have a salad on the side so your vegan guests can fill up on that rather than having to struggle through the coq au vin.