Dinnertime when I was a kid used to always conclude with this odd line from my parents: “Eat up every grain of rice if you want your wife to be pretty.” The story behind it is that each rice grain left behind in the bowl represents a mole or pockmark on my future wife’s face. Of course, I ate that story right up then because I was a kid and kids believe anything. Upon hearing that reminder, I would pick up my chopsticks again and make sure the entire rice bowl is spotless. In retrospect, it was kind of funny that I had actually taken the story seriously since I was at that age when girls were still icky to me. Anyway, like I said, I was a kid – making sense was not very high on the priority list.
When I grew old enough to realize that this was just another one of those let’s-see-how-long-we-can-fool-our-kids ruses that parents frequently like to employ, I also began to understand their true intent. Okay, their true intent really was just to get me to eat every grain of rice in my bowl. But the importance of the matter lies in the why.
Rice is the main staple in the Chinese diet, as is the case with most other Asian diets. Ever since its crops were first domesticated thousands of years ago in the Yangtze River valley, rice has become such a crucial element of our daily sustenance that instead of greeting one another in the evening with, “Hi…have you eaten dinner yet?”, we ask, “Hi…have you eaten rice yet?” In short, “rice” is practically synonymous to “meal” and in the poorer regions of China, it is the meal.
What makes rice so precious is not only its high concentration of nutrients, but also the difficulty in which it is cultivated and harvested. Rice plants have very fragile roots, which means that the soil has to be tilled over and over again until it is loose and soft enough for the roots to firmly take hold. Often times, this is done with only a water buffalo-drawn plow. Fertilizer will then have to be spread evenly across the field to ensure a balanced nutrient intake and smoothed over by dragging a log across the soil. Once the field is deemed to be ready, it is flooded ankle-deep with water in preparation for plantation.
Meanwhile, the rice seedlings are being nourished in separate seeding beds. Thirty to fifty days later, once they have sprouted shoots, they are ready to be planted in the flooded field. This process is usually carried out by hand and it involves heavy concentration as the sprouts have to be evenly spaced in precise rows. If they are too close together, they will block out one another’s nutrients and sunlight. However, if they are too far apart, maximum yield would not be achieved. Only experience and a steady hand can success in the delicate task be achieved.
It takes several months before the rice plants mature and during this period, the water level has to be carefully maintained via a complex irrigation system. When the plants are at the cusp of maturity, the field can finally be drained of water, the process of which spurs the plants on to maturity. Harvesting the mature plants is another grueling task. The rice grains first have to be threshed so that they are loosened from their hulls. In order to isolate the rice grains from the hull fragments, they are tossed up with a light breeze in the air so that the breeze will carry the lighter hull fragments away while the the heavier rice grains will fall back down on a sheet laid over the ground.
Only after all the above steps are painstakingly followed can the rice grains be packed and transported to the market. Of course, many of the steps are now mechanized, but it still does not minimize the amount of work involved in rice cultivation. My grandparents had been farmers and they made every effort to instill this view of rice in my parents, who then passed it on to me: every grain of rice is precious.
There is nothing truer than that statement. Think about the daunting number of steps required to produce a single grain of rice – now imagine that multiplied by a hundred-fold just to fill up a rice bowl.
To this day, I ensure that every grain of rice that touches my bowl is not wasted – no longer because I believe in a childhood myth, but because I value the hardship endured so that I may have a bowl of rice in my meal. If we take it further and apply this view to our daily lives, we will be that much closer to learning to appreciate the small things in Life.
Every grain of rice is precious
(Photo courtesy of: Sweet Mandarin Cookery School)
