Do you know what you don’t know?

This morning I prepared a Chinese style breakfast, which I thought was a good meal for my family on Saturday. The breakfast included Goyza, pan-fried eggs, fresh soybean milk, congee, and fruits.

We always joke that a lot of Chinese who were raised and grew up in China still carry their Chinese stomachs everywhere. I always want to have authentic Chinese food wherever I am going. I will be very tired of always eating Western style food such as hamburgers, sandwiches for more than 3 days. In my eyes, Chinese food is my comfort food.

This morning I thought that my yummy breakfast included the types of food my husband and myself like to have for breakfast.

However, my son looked at the meal and said the homemade breakfast was not good. I asked him, “What is a good breakfast then?” He mentioned sandwich, toast, sausage or pancake, etc.

I realized that after 5 years living in Vancouver, my son has gradually changed and he prefers Western style food rather than Chinese food. So the type of nice Chinese breakfast my husband and I like is not what our boy prefers.

I remember earlier this summer, our son went to a summer camp in China called Chinese Cultural Immersion Summer Camp sponsored by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council. The purpose was to have the Chinese Canadian or Chinese American Children visit their roots of the family-China, and know better about China. This is a great camp, and I was very excited about it. I don’t want my son to understand less and less about China after several years of staying in Canada.

The organization tried very hard to prepare everything for those kids including visiting historical sites such as Greatwall, introducing them to Chinese traditional culture such as the Beijing opera. The organization also made lots of good Chinese food for the children. The camp leader shared lots of photos with us parents on Wechat. Almost 99% of the camp parents were born and raised in China, so we could tell that those foods were very good. We could feel that the sponsor was very considerate about preparing them for the kids.

However, later I heard that some kids had skipped the meal and that they prefer Western style food, so they did not eat anything but went looking for McDonald’s at night. The kids were very satisfied after having hamburger and fries as their dinner. After finding out about the kids’ behavior, we parents thought what a waste to not enjoy that nice local food.

Another story I heard from my colleague was that their North American team went to China several years ago on a business trip. After signing the contract, the Chinese customer wanted to thank their team for making the trip and coming over to China. The Chinese customer wanted to be a host for dinner. However, they did not know the food culture of North American people, and they selected a very popular and nice place to have a lamb feast. The North American people went there, and some of them said they had a horrible experience of eating the lamb, as the feast included every part of a lamb including the brain and organs.

Some of them were very adventurous and ate the brains, but they threw up after going back to the hotel because they felt horrible about eating them.

So there are lots of times in our lives when we find we have a lack of knowledge about things, but we are not aware. There are lots of things we don’t know.

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