If Anthony Bourdain wasn't already my literary muse he would have acquired the status after the Shanghai episode. Like most of his TV work, it's not always the culinary content that dazzles (French Laundry aside, good God - a tobacco confection?!) More likely the interplay between holy grail destinations (Shangri-La) and jaded but somehow reverent observations.
Not much in this episode induced moans out of me. Quite the contrary, much of the foodstuffs elicited either ehs or eewws. Matter of fact my friend Priya can't even watch the show as most of the consumables causes a gag reflex. I can only assume she happened to catch the infamous downing of a still beating cobra heart. Albeit gross but Holy Fatima how symbolically kewl?
In the Shanghai episode I wasn't overly impressed by the jiggley foods derived from soy or Yak products that would squeam out the most robust stomach (Yak butter tea aside). Far more intiquing was the ragged and uneasy balance between man and nature. Take the beautifully bizarre symbiotic relationship with the fishermen of Erhai Lake and their professional fisher-birds, the Cormorant. A bevy of birds follow the fisherman and his carved wooden boat. A piece of string is tied around the birds' throats to prevent them from swallowing a fish, once nabbed. An amazing act. The birds dive for fish, surface with one wriggling in their gizzard only to be forced to spit out their quarry on the boat.
Cormorants are not the prettiest or most graceful of avians. Blackfeathered, yellow beaked and oily in plummage I've always been amused by their Pterdactyl appearance and ability to swim half submerged. On my morning commute past the Meadowlands - should I say the part that hasn't been sold to the Japanese or serve as a shrine to our gluttony to trash - also doubles as a wetland. Nature's own filtering system providing a transition between salt water and fresh, allowing earth, sand and water to sift toxins from water and return it refreshed to the ecosystem.
I watch for my Cormorant every morning. He is dog ugly, not in the least graceful waving his hooked wings like a bat out of a particularly bad part of hell. My fellow commuters know not to talk to me for I must view upon him for the brief seconds it takes the train to speed by his brackish 'hood. He doesn't socialize much, prefering his own company to that of swans, geese and storks. Although I think he might have a thing for one of the Mallards.
Bourdain seems intriqued by the Cormorants of Erhai Lake, the relationship between fisherman and fisher fowl, the antiquated practice destined for extinction between man and bird. Upon watching the tethered birds return to their masters he observes "they seem to like it."
For devoting a portion of the Shanghai show to Cormorants then proceeding to revolve the largest prayer wheel in Shangri-la and observing the non zen-like joking monks, Anthony Bourdain gets props as my muse for the day.
Picture credited to Gil Azouri
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