Sustaining Chinese culture like the ritual of breakfast cereal, one of the earliest classic chapter novels, Monkey, unfolds as a pilgrimage over 81 calamities revolving around the pilgrim’s flesh that gives immortality to whomever partakes it.China’s never-ending toothsome and nauseous cannibalistic trope continues in modern (neo)colonial feeding frenzy in Lu Xun, Wu Zhuoliu, and Yu Hua. Embodying (neo)colonial powers, the epithet “foreign devils” in Lu Xun and his contemporaries turns into an idol should one of the devils love chinoiserie as much as Robert Hans van Gulik, who sires the oc/cult in the Tang dynasty’s Judge-cum-Detective Dee. Dynastic TV dramas on Dee and others invariably feature the proverbial “half-men,” eunuchs who usurp the imperial power, exposing the master-slave bond/age in figurative castration.This flesh-eating chop suey feast comes to span China, Europe, and America, where Oriental stigma of slanting eyes is transformed into stigmata of white and off-white—mainstream and ethnic—spiritual triumphalism. Asian North American self-Orientalizing meets one Asian immigrant talking back from Taiwan’s juancun, military dependents’ village. This magical menu even boasts of the as yet inedible rock of Taiwan, which fantasizes itself a tasty morsel to Japan to perish any thought of Red China’s maws. Seriality then turns deadly in Chinese TV dramas featuring serial killers and dismemberments. Does this turn to Sino-noir signal a psychological displacement from one’s terminal condition, cowering under that which cannot be named—the dictatorship not so much of the proletariat as of the Party secretariat?After this teasing/teething "Appetizer" of an introduction that sets the table of contents—or just the table—the cannibalistic chop suey countenances "Ten Courses" and one "Dessert," all in the flourishes of the Edwardian font becoming any designer menu at an upscale establishment. The appetizer, ten courses, and dessert make twelve dishes, a perfect Taiwanese banquet. Bon Appetit!
