Bird Nest Soup, Roasted Duck And Ming Tse

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 120, 23 May 1942, Page 6

Bird Nest Soup, Roasted Duck And Ming Tse

lI7HEN Eve Invited Adam to taste ' of the fruit she had plucked, she little knew what far reaching results would accrue from her very wifely desire to share such a dainty morsel with her husband. Neither did the unknown somebody who first took a pair of pet rabbits to Australia have any idea how great a pest he had thereby introduced into that country. The first little trickle from a mountain side doesn't know how mighty a river is going to flow seawards from such a small beginning. Likewise Sarah, when she cast her first coy look and sidelong glance at Abraham, little knew that as a result of that shy communication of her affection she was going to be the mother of a race as great in number as the stars in heaven and as the sand upon the seashore.

By Ret). C. W. Chandler

We can picture Napoleon and Alexander the Great at the zenith of their careers, but how hard it is to realise that at their beginnings their mothers patted their dimpled cheeks and "chucked" them into toothless laughter. Little did I imagine that my recent visit to a chop suey house represented another of these small beginnings that may well lead to lofty conclusions.

My motto is, "make a start and God will lead you step by step to some appointed end." Already I nave been privileged to partake of two Chinese meals in two Chinese homes, and the conversation that went with those meals made a most delightful relish.

Dinner With Ming Tse

The meals, which included bird's nest soup, roast duck and dim sem (Chinese pastry) will soon be forgotten, but not so the delightful observations about a number of things that comprised the conversation. You see, Ming Tse has come "out of the smoke," and I've met him, and as a result of that meeting I feel led to say that few people have any idea of the charm of the Chinese character.

Approach a man as an inferior and all doors are barred to mutual understanding; treat him as you, yourself, would be treated, and the dam is broken and two streams of thought are blended. Ming Tse quoted a Chinese proverb on his invitation to dinner. "With sincere friends only distasteful water is enough." While we sipped from dainty Chinese bowls our edible bird's nest soup (the main ingredient of which is becoming increasingly expensive and hard to procure) our appetites for spiritual food were also being satisfied. He wanted to learn from me, and I wanted to learn from him. I came away much richer than I went, and I hope that I left Ming Tse the richer for my having shared his roast duck, and his Confucian philosophy. When I reached home again I found a letter awaiting me from a Jewish refugee to whom this column has appealed. "What has astonished me so much since coming to New Zealand," he says, "is the way that religion comes into everyday life so much more than it did in my own country."

Out in the Open

"Here," he continues, "ar. everyday man in an everyday voice will discourse quite freely upon the subject. Heretofore religion has been, to me, something mysterious and 'dressed up.' Something chanted in an unnatural voice by a man smothered in brocade before a lighted altar. Something to be recited and responded to in the same way on every occasion. Not something to be discussed freely and impartially by ordinary men and women." In the past it has been to him like a spoonful of medicine being thrust into his mouth at regular intervals by a very rich mother who seldom lets her children reason why. This all leads me to suggest that the silverfish who infest my library shelves have a more catholic taste than most of us. They will chew the pages of the Koran just as readily as they will feast on the Analects of Confucius or the Greek New Testament.

I am sure that God never intended the wa> of salvation to be so exclusive as we have made it. We have got to take our blinkers off as well as our coloured spectacles before we can be mentally and spiritually big enough to be worthy of anything on the other side of death.

I have yet a good deal more to say about Ming Tse and the Jewish refugee, in which, at a later date, I am sure you will be interested.