Purely Delicious

 

    An anecdote: In elementary school and middle school, I would eat cold tofu with soy sauce for lunch at school because I grew up eating it as my parents focused on a well-rounded food experience with many different protein sources. People often called the food or me weird, but it was always normal to me.
    Filled with people and a variety of produce, the above image gives a glimpse into what it is like to walk to rows of an asian street food market. This photo is of the long standing Yau Ma Tei Market in Hong Kong. Vivid colors from the flags and produce create a complex image, with the focal point being the bottom right portion of the image. Here the viewer sees many colorful vegetables, including squash, pumpkin, and zucchini flowers. The brilliancy of these products quickly draw the eye to them upon one’s gaze. The plastic bags around one of the products, too, draws in the eye. From here, a viewer might then begin to examine the many different people and faces that fill the image. One’s eye may be led towards the top of the image when following the line of the crowd. Above the crowd, one might notice the many different flags and colors that appear, creating an overall vivid and bright image.
    Food is unifying, and is an essential aspect of every culture and life, though there remains stark differences in the understandings of food and its meaning. In Mary Douglas’ “Purity and Danger,” she argues “rituals of purity and impurity create unity in experience" (Douglas 1966:3). Aspects of life are often associated with pure and impure, and individuals are generally quick to make assumptions about food and or its preparation. Douglas discusses the cultural practices related to both the body and the preparation of food” (Douglas 1966:156). “If we treat ritual protection of body orifices as a symbol of social preoccupations about exits and entrances, the purity of cooked food becomes important” (Douglas 1966:156). The food that one puts into their body can also be connected to the greater groups and cultures that people are a part of. There is great correlation between the protection of the body, to keep it pure, and the symbolic purity of food that ensues. The importance of the body and its purity extends beyond to social organizations and concerns of the conceptions of entry and exit. Cleanliness and ritual purity remain ever so present in life, and can be parallel to the purity of food and its preparation.
    Conversations surrounding food are often related to the purity or impurity of it, or of our understanding of it. Foods that are commonly consumed in the United States are vastly different from that of everywhere else in the world. Pure and impure may be looked at as “normal” or “weird” in conversations about food, but these words are only backed by cultural understandings of what should and should not be consumed. Western understandings of foods produced and bought in markets like this one, often view them as “dirty”  or “gross,” strictly because they are different than Western ones. What may be pure to one, may be impure to others, and some may associate certain foods as being “dirty” or “dirt” as it might be out of place in one’s life or social structure (Douglas 1966:2). To my eye, but not to all, the foods in the above image are pure, they are produce that I can recognize and would know what to do with. This image may also be connected to the idea of pure and impure through the greater understanding of markets like this. While it is potentially stereotyping, there is often a misconception that markets like this one are “dirty” or impure, people believe there is a lack of order or cleanliness. Cluster or business are also often identified with “dirty” or impure, both of which are qualities of markets like this one, though they lack a true association with these concepts, they are just cultural ideas.

    References

Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. London and New York: Routledge Classics.
Sipligunj, Rahul. 2020. “Untitled” From ndtv.com. Retrieved April 3, 2024 (https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/raccoon-dogs-at-seafood-market-in-china-could-be-behind-covid-19-outbreak-study-3868588).