Red Mandarin Dress

this.
    As a starter, a waiter brought a huge platter called Buddha’s Head. It had but a slight resemblance to a human head—it was carved out of a white gourd, steamed in a bamboo steamer covered with a huge green lotus leaf.
    “A special dish.” Pei was all smiles, giving the go-ahead signal to the waiter holding a long bamboo knife.
    Chen watched the waiter saw a piece off of the “skull” with the knife, put the chopsticks into the “brains,” and come up with a fried sparrow—inside a grilled quail—inside a braised pigeon.
    “So many brains in one head,” one of the executives chuckled.
    “It’s Buddha,” Chen said, smiling. “No wonder.”
    “All the essences mix together to produce an extraordinary brain boost,” another manager added, “for intellectuals who constantly cudgel their brains out.”
    “A perfect balance of yin and yang,” still another said, “from a variety of fowls.”
    Chen had heard of theories regarding dietary correspondence between humans and other species. His mother used to cook pork brains for his benefit, but here it was far more elaborate than he had expected.
    Then came a lake turtle, steamed with crystal sugar, yellow wine, ginger, scallion, and a few slices of Jinhua ham.
    “As we all know, turtle is good for yin, but all you can get at the market are farm-raised, fed with hormones and antibiotics. Ours is different. It comes directly from the lake,” Pei said emphatically, sipping at his wine. “People have erroneous notions about yin/yang. In the winter, they devour red meat, such as lamb, dog, and deer, but that’s not dialectical—”
    “Supposedly a boost to yang, so it’s good in the cold winter, I’ve heard,” Chen said, intrigued by Pei’s lecture, which sounded quite philosophical, “but I’ve never learned about the dialectical part.”
    “For some people, with the yang in their system already pathologically high, the red meat choices could be harmful. In a case like that, the turtle actually contributes to the balance,” Pei said, looking flushed more from Chen’s response than from the wine. “Now another common mistake is that people believe sex leads to the depletion of yin and is therefore dangerous. They forget that hard work also consumes yin.”
    “Really!” Chen said, thinking of the “thirsty illness” he had been analyzing for his paper. “That’s quite profound.”
    “Our dinner is a perfectly balanced one. Good for both yin and yang. Confucius says, you cannot be too selective with your food. What does that mean? Surely it is not just about the taste. For a sage like Confucius, it goes much deeper. Food must be a real boost, so that you will make a great achievement for your country.”
    Whether or not it was copied from those classic books solely for business purposes, it was true that Confucian echoes still resounded in Chinese daily life.
    Pei proved to be eloquent on more than theories. The banquet continued on with one surprise after another. The gigantic-fish-head soup enriched by American ginseng; Hajia—special Guangxi lizards, fresh instead of dried and processed as commonly seen in herb shops—stewed with white tree ears; and swallow-nest congee strewn with scarlet Gouji.
    “Oh, the swallow nest,” Pei exclaimed, raising a ladle. “To make their nests on cliffs, swallows have to take whatever they can pick up and mix it with their saliva—the essence of life.”
    The swallow nest was a time-honored bu product. The dainty bowl of sweet congee reminded him of a passage in Dream of the Red Chamber , in which a delicate girl’s swallow-nest breakfast costs more than a farmer’s food for a whole year.
    “But how can the swallow saliva be so special?” Chen asked again.
    “From time to time people feel dry in their mouths, lacking saliva, especially after the cloud and rain, you know,” Pei said with a warm smile. “That’s a symptom of insufficient yin.”
    “Yes, thirsty illness,” Chen said. But people could feel thirsty for all kinds of reasons, he reflected, not necessarily because of the clouds and rain.
    To Chen’s surprise, what appeared next on the banquet table was a bowl of fatty pork braised in soy sauce. A homely dish, in sharp contrast to all the extravagances.
    “Chairman Mao’s special,” Pei said, reading the question in Chen’s eyes. “On the eve of a crucial battle during the second civil war, Mao declared, ‘My brain is worn out, I need soy-sauce-braised fatty pork