The Invitations Before the First Grain of Rice — Epoche B1
Last month I spent a week with my friend Trung's family in Đà Nẵng, and what stays clearest is not a beach or a market but the moment, each evening, when nobody was yet allowed to eat. Dinner at his aunt's house had no single main dish. Five or six small ones went down together: fish braised in a clay pot, water spinach fried with garlic, a clear soup with squash, boiled greens, a saucer of fish sauce with chilli, and a pot of rice that never seemed to empty. Everyone eats from all of them, a little at a time, into a private bowl of rice. But before a single chopstick moved, Trung's youngest cousin, who is nine, spoke to the table: "Con mời ông bà ăn cơm" — inviting her grandparents to eat. Then her parents. Then the aunts, in order of age. Each elder was named, one by one, from the oldest downward, and only when the list was finished did the meal begin. She recited it the way one says "please" in a shop, automatically, faster than thought — and Trung, twenty-six years old, did the same before touching his own bowl. The invitation is not thanks for the food. It is a register, taken aloud, of who at this table came before you. The aunt turned her chopsticks around and used the clean ends to put fish into the guest's bowl; low rice bowls were refilled without being asked; the conversation ran on over the guest's head in Vietnamese. On the last evening two more cousins joined, and the invitations multiplied accordingly. Each younger person, it turns out, owes the sentence to everyone older — every elder, every meal, before the first grain of rice. References Nguyen, T. (2018). Food and Hospitality in Vietnamese Culture. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 49(2), 234-249.