Eating Together

City living can be quite impersonal. People uses ATM machines instead of going through bank tellers to withdraw money. Topping up our mobile phone prepay credits is just a few clicks away. Questions over our previous lectures can't be asked over an appointment with our lecturers, but through emails. Events, and social activities are increasingly made via mass communication rather than personal invitation.


Even in city living, finding time to spend for each other is real hard since it is very inconvenient to take the hassle of meeting up with each other, to spend money for communal meals or even to spend time with our loved ones. Life becomes impersonal and detached. Activities replace fellowship. Communal meals become take-away packets. People face real loneliness. Though they may not be alone, but the lack of intimacy with one another can be a huge barrier for city folks to experience what it means to love and to be loved in a community.



Probably what we really need is to recover what it means to eat together, through the Chinese perspective. Rather than putting our rice and our dishes nicely into neat plates for each individual, we share our dishes in main dish bowls.



It is a sign of love, fellowship and sharing. It is a sign of equality, reciprocity, tolerance. It is a sharing of our joy and woes together. It is a reminder that we are not of our own. We need each other, we share our lives with each other and we put each others above ourselves.

Without falling into the sin of gluttony and without falling into the danger of using eating as a replacement for real intimacy, probably we should practise having meals together, the Chinese way. By hook or by crook, we should make time to eat with people. If possible use smaller individual bowls, and put the main dishes in the middle for everyone to share. Make a point to enjoy good meals with people. Life will become more meaningful.