One of the things about us three boys growing up at Lentor was in our conduct at family dinners. My mum insisted that we would always have meals together as a family.
It wasn’t too difficult early on when we were still schooling in the mid 70s to mid 80s. But when we each started national service, then undergraduates studies then finally work proper, it was increasingly hard. Still, our parents would typically wait for us to return home, sometimes as late as 8 pm, so we could all sit down for dinner together.
Whenever there was a soup dish on the table my mum would always request that we drink our soup politely and without slurping. Whenever one of us forgot, she’d remark pointedly, “he tang xiao sheng yi dian”, which translated literally means “drink soup a little quieter”. Likewise, when we were eating, the right way to do so was to chew without swankering it around in the mouth and making a din.
These lessons were ingrained in the three of us so it pretty much became natural behavior. Because of how our mum told us to adopt proper table manners, at least for me, I grew up assuming that the only and proper way of eating soup was to drink it quietly.
So, when I first saw / heard (take yer pick!) Ling drinking soup, and it went:
“SSSLLLLUUURRRRRPPPP”
I looked at her in abject horror! Now, Ling explained that no one at home ever told her that soup should be drunk otherwise. So, I went about looking around the topic of slurping, and it was quite a surprising find. Apparently, some Asians—especially the Japanese—think that sucking air as you drink soup adds to the taste.
Now, maybe I should ask some of my colleagues over at the Applied Sciences School (they teach food nutrition there) whether there’s any sort of biological basis to this. Oh yeah I could search online, but in this case I’d go with people who should really know. I certainly think there’s some cultural element to this, and definitely some sort of psychological effect. But in terms of etiquette, slurping is never considered polite, as this author says.
Be that as it may and maybe this sounds very elitist. But I honestly believe that air should only enter one’s body through the nose and not the mouth. And the loud, sucking-air slurping sound is the sort of sound that makes my hair stand in roughly the same way as say, scratching nails on a blackboard.
It’s sort of funny now. Because whenever my nephews are at Lentor for dinner and we’re also there, I see my mum teaching them the same Foo Family Table Etiquette (FATE ™) as she did for me from 30 years ago. I’m pretty certain when our own kids are old enough to dine on the family table, I’ll be passing on these very same lessons to them then too.
I don’t remember being taught to drink soup quietly as well. My mum, however, did teach me not to knock incessantly on the utensils when eating.
Still, I think there are multiple standards on how dining should really be done. Noise is generally perceived as bad. I have seen worse displays of foul etiquette: talking while your mouth is full, gorging down food like we’re having hungry ghost festival everyday and drinking others’ soup with your own utensils without first asking.
I think the last one disgusts me most.
Then again, since the Ear, Nose and Throat are inherently linked, why shouldn’t air be taken in through the mouth, especially it has the same sucking function as the nose.
It’s debatable, just like how some can readily accept belching but cringe when another break wind.
Ling, or someone who knows more about human biology than I do, will probably be a better person to answer this question; but I’ve always thought that nostrils serve a function of a simplistic air filter.
hey, when we sing don’t we breathe in through the mouth into the diaphragm?? mouth bigger than nostrils combined together ma so more efficient… =P
in japan, when you eat ra-men, you’re SUPPOSED to sluuuu….rrrrrpppp it especially if it’s delicious. the louder the better. even ladies will slurp, gracefully… LOL
n oh no, you wouldn’t want to see (or hear) how i drink horlicks at ya kun… i sllluuurrppp my half-boiled egg then pour the horlicks onto the egg plate and sllluuurrpppp the horlicks =P then end of with “AH!”
but other than those two, yeah, we should all close mouth and chew quietly… ^^
Though the sound of noodles being slurped has never aroused my attention one way or another, I still can’t bring myself to slurp audibly in public. Hell, if using slick plastic chopsticks, I’m lucky if I even get the darned noodles in my mouth in the first place!