There’s a Chinese restaurant near our house that serves authentic Shanghai cuisine. We dined there last night. It’s a small place, tastefully decorated in deep blues and lime greens. On the walls are large framed prints of advertisements for cigarettes, pomades, medicines and teas, featuring pretty girls in cheongsams in the fashion of the Thirties. The prints bring to mind Ang Lee’s latest film of wartime Shanghai, ‘Lust, Caution’.
The paper place mats are printed with the animals of the Chinese zodiac, along with the lunar years to which each animal belongs, and a capsule summary of the attributes of the humans born in those years. The zodiac cycle being one of twelve years, it follows that the Gregorian calendar years for each sign is separated by this interval, so that for the Dragon, for example, we have 1916, 1928, 1940, all the way up to 2012.
The place mat also has a note that if the diner was born before the year 1900, he or she should add 12 to his or her birth year to determine the correct zodiac sign. Born before 1900, indeed! That would make that diner at least 107 years old today.
But not to worry, for the years printed on the place mat go as far into the future as 2012, thereby preparing for the advent of diners yet unborn.
These Chinese restaurants, they think of everything.
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