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17 Eating Lunch and Recreating the Universe: Food and Cosmology in Hoi An, Vietnam Nir Avieli It was 11:30 am and Quynh said that lunch was ready. We all took our seats on the wooden stools by the round wooden table: Quynh and her husband Anh, his mother and sister, Irit (my spouse) and I. The food was already set on the table: a small plate with three or four small fish in a watery red sauce, seasoned with some fresh coriander leaves, a bowl of morning-glory soup (canh rau muong) boiled with a few dried shrimps, and a plate of fresh lettuce mixed with different kinds of green aromatics. There was also a bowl of nuoc mam cham (fish sauce diluted with water and lime juice, seasoned with sugar, ginger, and chili). An electric rice cooker was standing on one of the stools by the table. There were also six ceramic bowls and six pairs of ivory-colored plastic chopsticks. We took our seats, with Anh’s mother seated by the rice cooker, and handed her our rice bowls. She filled them to the rim with steaming rice, using a flat plastic serving spoon. Quynh pointed at the different dishes and said: “com [steamed rice], rau [(fresh) greens], canh [soup], kho [‘dry’—pointing to the fish].” Then she pointed to the fish sauce and added “and nuoc mam.” In this chapter, I discuss the Hoianese1 daily, home-eaten meal as a cultural artifact, as a model of the universe (Geertz 1973): a miniature representation of the way in which the Vietnamese conceive of the cosmos and the ways in which it operates. This is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the central Vietnamese town of Hoi An since 1998. the basic structure of the hoianese meal The Hoianese, home-eaten meal is basically composed of two elements: steamed rice (com), served with an array of side dishes (mon an or “things [to] eat”). It could be argued that this meal is structured along the lines of a Levi-Straussian binary opposition: an amalgam of colorful, savory toppings Eating Lunch and Recreating the Universe / 219 juxtaposed over a pale, bland, staple grain. Moreover, the relations between the rice and mon an could be analyzed within the nature–culture dichotomy that underlies Levi-Strauss’s work, with the hardly transformed rice standing for “nature” and opposed to the deeply manipulated dishes that stand for “culture.” However, the Hoianese meal is better understood within the context of Vietnamese culture. The mon an (‘things to eat”) are of a more varied and dynamic nature than the rice. The Hoianese mon an are made of raw and cooked vegetables and leafy greens and a small amount of animal protein, usually that of fish. The mon an adhere to the four categories mentioned by Quynh: rau— raw greens, canh—boiled soup, and kho—a “dry” dish (fried, stir-fried, or cooked in sauce), which are always accompanied by nuoc mam (fermented fish sauce). The basic structure of the Hoianese home-eaten meal is therefore that of a dyad of rice and “things to eat,” which further develops into a five-fold structure encompassing five levels of transformation of edible ingredients into food: raw, steamed, boiled, fried/cooked, and fermented. This “twofold-turn-fivefold” structure is a Weberian “ideal-type.” Ashkenazi and Jacob suggest that such basic meal structures should be viewed as “schemes” for a meal “which individuals may or may not follow, but which most will recognize and acknowledge as a representation of the ways things should be” (2000:67). Thus, though Hoianese meals routinely adhere to the “twofold-turn-fivefold” scheme, there are innumerable possibilities and combinations applied when cooking a meal. Let us now turn to the ingredients and dishes that constitute the meal: rice, fish, and greens, and show how they conjure into a solid nutritional logic, firmly embedded in an ecological context. Com (rice) “Would you like to come and eat lunch in my house?” asked Huong, a salesgirl in one of the clothes shops with whom we were chatting for a while. I looked at Irit and following our working rule of “accepting any invitation” said “sure, why not!” We followed Huong toward the little market near the Cao Dai temple and turned into a paved alley that soon became a sandy path and ended abruptly in front of a gate. “This is my house!” Huong exclaimed proudly, pushing her bike through the gate and into the...

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