News from JMS
Welcome to our blog, where we plan to feature news, views and translation clues. Things like: did you know that English cats say ‘meow’, German moggies ‘miau’, French felines ‘miaou’, and Spanish Siamese ‘miau’. Pause for thought…
Four dishes and one soup: a recipe for austerity
Business banquets of twenty or more courses used to be common in China but President Xi Jinping has introduced new austerity measures, now known as ‘four dishes and one soup’, for officials and the military, with many expense-account restaurants suffering downturns in revenue. The term goes back to the Ming Dynasty when the first emperor of that era, Zhu Yuanzhang, initiated the same kind of restraint. On a trip to Fuping county in December last year, Xi Jinping enjoyed a relatively spartan meal of braised chicken, local stew, stir-fried pork, garlic shoots and melon soup. Not a drop of baijiu in sight (China’s famous, fierce and flammable tipple, up to 120 per cent proof and soon to marketed in milder form to the West). Four dishes, one soup has now become shorthand for the government’s policy of curbing excesses in officialdom. There is a growing mood in China against corruption among officials and corporations. So the business of banquets may not be so big in future…and we will see if this and baijiu go down well in the east and west.