Draft EE1

      Last year, in order to have a better education I came to American. When I first got here I cannot adapt to the new food and new eating habits. After seven months being in the USA, I have a whole picture of the American food and culture. From my prospective, this is because China and American have different culture which can cause the different food and habits things. For this reason, there are a lot of differences between Chinese food and American food. But there is still something in common between these two countries.

As we know, China has a very long history which means the food history is also very long. And due to the large area of territory, people who come from different part of China have different food. In north part of China, people prefer to have flour more than the rice, but in south part of China is totally opposite, people more like the rice. This is because in north the rice has slower process of growing than in south. For the American, I think this kind of different is not that obvious. In my university’s dining hall the main food are the hamburgers and pizzas. During the winter vacation I been to the west part of America (My university is in the middle part), California, the normal food in there is also pizzas, hamburgers and hotdogs.

Eating Habits

In Hortwiz’s article “Eating at the Edge”, the author talk about the eating habit and eating time at the modern society. It is turn out nowadays people like to eat alone and eat at on their own mealtime but not the regular time. In order to illustrate the author’s idea, he gives an example which is the soup. At before people put the soup into the big pot and by doing this people can eat together and share with the same pot of soup. But nowadays, lots of people have the soup in a single package which means everyone has their own bowl of soup and have the meal all by their own. For the eating time thing, the author write that “the increased significance of grazing, not eating at fixed meal times in the same place in the company of one’s family or workmates” (qtd. in Hortwiz 42) which means people also eat not at the regular meal time and even do not eat with the same person, instead they will eat the meals whenever they want.

For me, I would like to eat with my friends or family, because I am not the kind of person who can eat or stay alone. Also when I eat with my friends I can talk to them and get large information from them. I am not alone in the society, so I must communicate with others. But when it comes to the meal time, I must say I am not a regular time “eater”. I am a university student now, so I always eat meal between the break of the two classes. I believe this happened for many of the university students. But if it is not in hurry, I would like to eat at the regular meal time, because eat at the right meal time can help me have a good healthy body.

 

Essay 3

Name: Zechi Zhang

WRIT 1133-27

Professor: Eric Leake

4/18/2012

The restaurant observation: South Philly Cheese Steak

Last week I went to the South Philly Cheese Steaks. it is a very good restaurant with great delicious food. The cheese steaks are made from thinly-sliced of steak and melted cheese in a long bread roll. In the combo meal you can get a cup of drink and some French fries. I usually put some ketchup in my cheese steak, because in this way I will not feel the cheese steak so fatness. The reason why I went to this place is because this restaurant is located near our university and almost anyone who ate it before, will introduce this place for me.

         When you get into this place you can see a bar table at your right hand and on your left there large and small tables there. You can order your meal at the bar table and also you can order it in the cheese steak window. Next to the cheese steak window, there is a pool table over there, sometimes there will be some people play it. At the cheese steak window where you can buy the food, you can see part of the kitchen though a big glass window. I think the big transparent glass window can give the customers a message which means the restaurant’s kitchen is very clean. There are three televisions in the restaurant, two are near the bar table and the other one is on the opposite wall. The channels on the TVs are always the sports channel, such as football or basketball.

         In order to make a good observation I went this place twice, one in the day time and the other in the midnight time. In the day time, there are few people go there and they often eat at the outside table. People like to chat when they are eating. If someone eats by their own, they will play with their phones or laptops. Most people go there choose to make the order and then take the food to go. So there are not so much people in the restaurant. Also there are few people order some wine or beer and then sit at the bar table to relax themselves. The whole atmosphere is under some pop music and in this way it can let customers feel relax and delightful.

         The second time when I went to there is midnight. The restaurant is completely different from the day time. There are lots of people in there and they all drink wine or beer. The most interesting thing is the cheese steak is still sell and you can also order at the bar table. When I went into this place I saw people were all drinking, dancing or playing the pool table. The music was becoming more like the nightclub’s style. If someone wants to get high or wants to find some beautiful girls, I highly recommended them to come to this bar.

         Though the different time of the day, we can see the situation in this restaurant is totally different. What I am really interested into is that the restaurant with the bar combination thing. I think this is a very good idea to make the whole place for fully used. In China I do not know any restaurants or bars do the same thing.

         Not only the great layout and the great time arrangement in this place, but also the delicious food are very important. In my opinion people go there expected the meat and cheese because there are a lot of meat in one cheese steak. The other thing which why people like to eat at this restaurant is the fast cook process. When I was eating there in the day time, I always see some people drop by and but some food to go. Maybe a person who has class or has work to do wants to cheese steak, because is fast and delicious. And if someone wants to eat chicken wings, he or she can definitely come here. In this place they have 3 different sauces for the chicken wings; in this situation you can find your own suitable taste. When we want to talk about the culture thing, there is only one thing come up with my mind. The thing is the fast food culture in American. I know lots of fast food in American and for me the cheese steak is the most interesting and delicious one in American.

Some resources about cheese steak

About cheese steak

Different food Different Meanings

In the article “’Breaking Bread with a Spread’ in a San Francisco County Jail” written by Sandra Cate, he talks about the food made by the prisoners. In the afternoon about 4:00 the prisoners will have the dinner, so they always fell hungry. Because in the jail there are not so many food materials to use or eat, the prisoners save some resources from their meal to cook. In their meal the dishes are very sample which only have some potatoes. Because they will share the food which they cooked to other prisoners, the food is not only the food itself, but also the mean some relationship between the prisoners.

In the article “The culture Politics of Eating in Shenzhen” written by Mary Ann o’donnell, she introduce us some of the eating culture in Shenzhen. Shenzhen is a very bustling city, but at the beginning it is just a small village. Nowadays, there are lots of people go to there to have job or study. So there will be two kinds of people, one kind of people is the local people and others are the new comers. The local people prefer to eat in open-air restaurants but the new comers prefer to eat in better environment restaurants. Food for the local people is kind of like the old Shenzhen spirit.

From these two articles I can tell different countries have different food and even in one country different part have different food. Sometimes food is not only a thing which can make you feel comfortable or make you full of energy, but also can represent one culture or a kind of spirit. These are all I learned from these two articles.

Zhushu Li

Essay From Zhishu Li


     In Zhishu Li's essay he talks about the milk advertisements just like mine. In the second paragraph he writes about the "Te Lun Su" milk advertisement which has almost the same content with my essay. We all talk about the healthy food and the safety food culture in current China. I think we have the same thought when we write something about the milk advertisements in China.

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       After the reading food and culture articles in our writing class, we start to find these kinds of things in the daily advertisements. In order to analysis the advertisements I find two Chinese advertisements to be compared. These two advertisements are all about the milk. The first one is called “Wang Zai Milk” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWxcJu0Nesc). In this advertisement the cute little boy uses his cute voice and his joyful emotions to tell the audience the milk is good and also delicious. Apparently, the audience for this advertisement is the children. But why the children, they do not have money to buy the milk. Here we must say something about Chinese culture. In a normal family of China, there will be only one child. So if the children influenced by the advertisement, then they will let their parents to buy it. Because there is only one child in the whole family, the parent will but it for their child. When we talk about the values of this milk, we can say the delicious taste and the cute logo of the products are the things we look for. Because we will not consider the how much calories the children will have, we just care about what the children like. Some children have some problems when they drink the milk, so if the children start to like to drink the milk, then their parents will set their mind at rest.
         The second advertisement is called l “Yi Li Jin Dian milk” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdkiKhsnkbw). At the start of the advertisement we can see a beautiful lady with two cute little girls in wild grassland. They were walking around the grassland and even find a ladybug. At the end they drink the milk near the cows which were eating grass, on the grassland. The whole atmosphere of this advertisement makes the audience feel comfortable and the green color let the people think the food is healthy. As fellow the lady says the milk is organic milk and there is no pollution or additive, the milk is best for your family members. So we can say the audience is the upper-class people (This milk sells expensive). Because the advertisement focus on the healthy things and use the beautiful lady which is a very famous singer in China to tell the audience if you care about the health choose this milk. Nowadays, there are lots of milk safety issues in China, such as “San Lu milk”, “Sheng Yuan milk”, and “Meng Niu milk”. So, healthy milk is what the audience wants. In China, not only milk, the safety and healthy food is becoming to the new food culture now. So if there is a food is not only healthy, but also have more nutrition, it will become popular.         

       There is another great advertisement can be analyzed which is the Nescafe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NYTUmGSKLM). In this advertisement we can see there are a handsome young man and a young beautiful lady work late in a company. Before they drink the café the whole color of the background is dark and the young man looks like tired. But after he drinks the café the background’s color becomes bright, also these two young men are full of energy and they even dance after drinking the café. We can easily find out the audience are the white-collars which always work late and feel tired and sleepy. And they want the easy and fast food or drink to save their time. In this advertisement the café is very easy and fast to make which are all the white-collar people want. The fast food culture is now popular in China. It is not only cheap, but also fast. China is a developing country, as the country’s developing the pace of the life is becoming more and more fast. So, fast food is becoming popular.       

       All in all, the advertisements can obviously show what are the consumer group and some food culture. Maybe different countries have different ways to perform the advertisements, but they have a same goal which is to attract the audience to buy the products. So the advertisement producer must know the food culture and what the audience wants. 

What is the difference

      In the article “Authenticity in America: Class Distinctions in Potato Chip Advertising”, written by Joshua Freedman and Dan Jurafsky. I can see that the culture, food and language are all connected to each other. At the beginning of the article the authors talk about the different language habit between the upper-class and the lower-class. After the language, the authors use the expensive and inexpensive potato chips’ advertisements to illustrate their ideas. In order to attract the customers to buy the product, the expensive chips use the long sentences and hard words which the upper-class people preferred. On the opposite, the cheap chips use simple words in their advertisements’ language which can make the lower-class comfortable. Also, the upper-class will be care about the health problems more than the lower-class people, so in the chips bag the expensive one have more words to talk about the health.

      After reading the article, there is a perfect example for the authors’ ideas. We can always see the wine advertisement on TV. When the advertisement is about the beers, the people in the advertisement will be in any kind of clothes and the back ground music will be in fast rhythm and cheerful. When it comes to the red wine, the people in the advertisement will be all in the suits and the music will be more elegant in a soothing rhythm. Because the red wine is more like the upper-class people’s thing and the beer is for the lower-class people. I do not know what it will be in American, but this is all in Chinese TV.

               

Traditional Food

         Christmas is a very an important festival in American. The families get together and enjoy a great dinner. In China we have a similar festival called Spring Festival. During this festival every family will go to the children’s grandfather’s house and have a delicious dinner. In this meal we usually have chicken, duck, fish and pork. Because is it the beginning of the year, we should have a great start. The most important food in this festival is dumpling which is the traditional food in the Spring Festival. The dumplings have a folk story about why we should eat dumplings. Long time ago, there are no people on the planet. A beautiful lady called Nvwa want to let the planet full of vitality, so she uses the loess to make human. But the weather is very cold, so the humans ears are fell off from their heads. Then Nvwa uses the thread through a little from the ears and put the other end of the line in to the humans’ mouths to stable the ears. In China the word “thread” and the dumplings’ filling are the same pronunciation. In order to commemorate the Nvwa’s merit, every year people dumplings. We can see the shape of the dumplings look like the gold ingot in the ancient China, so it is a very sign for the new year. Sometime we also put a coin in one of the dumplings, anyone who eats the dumpling with the coin will have luck for the whole year.

In this year’s Spring Festival, I stay in American because the winter vacation is a little bit short. Even though I am not with family I still cook some dumplings with my friends. Because this is the first time to cook the dumplings by ourselves, the taste is not very good and the dumplings’ shape looks strange. But this is a great meal for me because I can feel I am at home. For every student who studies abroad, it is the first time to far away from home and you should do everything by yourself. In this Spring Festival, the students get together just like a huge family. This “family” can make people feel warm and comfortable.
Besides the festival there is an other important event in one year which is the birthday. When I was nine years old, our family celebrated the 84^th birthday of my grandfather. I can still remember at the end of the meal my grandfather had a bowl of noodle and the noodle’s shape just like a word “life” in Chinese language. I asked my mother why my grandpa ate noodles at his birthday. My mother told me the long noodles represent a long life, so when we had our birthdays the Chinese people always had a bowl of noodle to wish had a long life. I also notice the age number on the birthday cake is 83 but not 84. I asked my mother why this thing happened. Is it because someone not good at math? Of course not, my mother told me when old people had their 73 or 84 years old birthday, they usually put 72 or 83 number on their birthday cake. Because there an old saying which is when the old people in their 73 or 84 years old they will have a tough year.

Though these two things we can say the food and culture are inseparable. We can see the culture though a country’s food. If you know the country well you can tell which part the country a person comes from. Take China for example, in the north of China people like the cooked wheaten food and the south part people like rice. In Sichuan Province and Hunan Province, people like to eat the spicy food, but people from Shanghai Province like the sweet food. These are all the proofs that the food and culture are related each other. So if you want to know a country’s culture, go to their country’s restaurant and “taste” their culture.