Ignorance Is Not Bliss...It's Just Embarassing

The other day youngest sister Xu was telling me that Chinese people do not sit on the floor when they eat—not at home nor at restaurants*. I felt like an idiot because that came as a big shock to me. I have always just assumed that they did because I had this (mis)conception that that was a Asian cultural practice. Youngest sister told me that only beggars sit on the floor in China, and to do so makes you look like a poor person. She also said no one sleeps on the floor unless there are no beds available (like if you have too many guests or something). Please tell me I am not the only ignoramus who did not realize that the Japanese and Korean customs of sitting and sleeping on the floor are not also Chinese.

I learned something else about China today. According to my students, Chinese movie stars (not sure about regular people; they kept saying “movie stars” but that may be because it’s so expensive) indulge in placentophagy aka the eating of human placenta. According to my sources (three Chinese girls from Fujian province), it is supposed to have many nutritional benefits. When I looked into this a little more, I stumbled on the rumor that an American movie star, namely Tom Cruise, was planning on eating Katie Holmes’ placenta from her delivery of baby Suri (he was reported to have said this by GQ magazine, but I think it was a joke(???)) and a website advocating the benefits of your baby’s placenta in capsule form. So yeah, not so much Chinese culture afterall, but who knows? Maybe it was an East to West sort of movement.

*Further research tells me that traditionally Chinese people did sit on the floor, but that hasn’t been customary since sometime during the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) when chairs were introduced to the elite and eventually became more widely used by all classes of people.