Chinese people are sometimes particular about eating. To have a tasteful meal is
in fact to taste the dishes. To taste the flavor, rather than to appease hunger, becomes the purpose of eating. The tongue takes the place of the stomach and turns out to be the final or the highest judge. However, we still gloss over such enjoyment with basic need by saying “having a meal” rather than “tasting dishes”. It is similar to our study of philosophy or art. The true and the beautiful can be utilized. Useful things can exist because they can be utilized. Citizen are divided into three classes in Plato’s The idea. The three classes correspond to the three different components of soul. Such desires as eating and drinking are the humblest part in soul and are equal to the common people in a political institution. The shrewdest politician knows how to cater populace perfunctorily by covering his or her wild ambition with common people’s will and welfare. Some people invite others to taste dishes in restaurants in the name of taking a meal. The tongue gives the stomach an excuse and says, “ Don’t complain about that! You have a share! You enjoy the name and I have to work for you! That’s not unfair to you!” Actually, only God knows, or even the empty stomach knows, that bark and grass roots are almost the same as chicken, duck,fish and meat if they are only used to fill the stomach! It is really unbelievable that even politics is involved in such a simple, natural,and physiological course of digestion and excretion.

A poet of ancient Rome once sighed that the stomach developed people’s talent and taught people skills. This idea was greatly elaborated by other sages by considering stomach as being honored as the one who really dominates human beings, the creator and advocator of all kinds of knowledge and professions and the aim of all activities of living activities, including flying, walking, swimming and creeping. Human beings’ creation including writing articles not only shows the richness and activity of the brain but also the emptiness of the stomach. The full stomach is useless and the brain at that time is dazed and can only have idiotic dreams. It is necessary to take a nap after lunch. This has become an underlying principle among some Chinese that. They usually underestimate hunger and only consider it as the behavior of beggars, thieves and prostitutes. Ancient German poets likened God to “a great chef” who cooks for human beings. It cannot avoid religious childishness. The one who cooks for us is never our master. To be such a God is not worthwhile. The one whom we cook for really controls our behaviors. For example, the master of a family is not the father who earns money to support the family but is the child who still smells its mother’s milk and sits there eating without working. Of course people cannot realize this point when they are still children and fathers would never admit this point. Nevertheless, every day, from morning till night, we sacrifice food and drinks to the stomach.

Isn’t it our God? It sounds reasonable if we consider in this way. However, the stomach is after all vulgar because it invariably absorbs things but never understands how to enjoy and appreciate them. Life becomes complicated because those people who need food to fill their stomachs and those who need appetite to enjoy food are everywhere. The former outlook on life can be described as to just have a meal and the latter one is to eat dishes. People of the former category work, produce and create in order to get a meal. Those of the latter kind use what people of the former kind produce and create to whet their appetite in order to eat more dishes.

That’s why music is needed at dinner table. If music is not enough, beauties will be required for accompanying. Cultured people host banquets to relieve winter coldness and summer heat, and additionally,viewing famous calligraphy and paintings around a table. Some of them even feast their eyes with flowers and scenic landscape. The dishes on the table are no doubt extremely exquisite. Like the body, the tongue who is usually very casual suddenly has chastity and integrity in such a well-off material environment. When the delicacy of food reaches such a degree, people should eat less. But on the contrary, actually, they eat even more. If we let the stomach to make a decision, we will not be permitted go beyond the proper limits, because it is finished as long as stomach are full.

But if the tongue is too picky and too gluttonous, the unlucky stomach will suffer a lot. As a result, one has to avoid certain kinds of food,otherwise it will be a punishment to the tongue for its greedy desire. So the outlook on life of eating dishes seems to be not proper.