Too Much Heaven

There is a Chinese vegetarian restaurant in our neighborhood.  It’s not bad.  There is a new one at the nearby mega-mall.  It’s better.  I wasn’t sure what to expect heading over there this evening.  A cold night, my wife dropped my daughters off at the door.  The name, Tai Tian, was composed of two characters I recognized.  But as usual, cast as they were, they made no sense: “too much heaven.”  I doubted that this was their intention.  My daughters helped me some to add some nuance about what it might really mean.

Once we’d got a seat by the heating duct, and welcomed my wife, who’d finally parked the car, we went through the ordering the way we would in any other Chinese restaurant: “We’ll take the General Cao’s Chicken, the ribs and the meat pies.  The English names of dishes like “cigarette fungus rain” left something to be desired, certainly. But who cares about a name?  The deluge of cigarette fungus was tasty.  The sauces on all the dishes were distinct.  Everyone wanted to return. 

Usually these places are associated with Buddhism.  Buddhist temples used to be the reliable places to get mock meat dishes, presumably calming the pangs of wistful bonzes for centuries.  But when I stopped to look at the poster, which profiled the owner there on the wall by the cashier, it surprised me.  He had a Daoist sort-of-cap on with blue flaps.  I asked my daughter who can read much faster than I if there was any mention of Buddhism, and she confirmed that there was none.  So this was a Daoist, veg joint.  I think that’s a first for me.

The boss wants to open restaurants across the country.  His mission is to increase the sophistication of vegetarian cuisine in every city in the nation.  Well done.  I thought back to the bottles of alcohol on the table, and the fancy décor, cruelty free eating with commercial domination.  I stared at the gent, and considered his blue flaps and this fungible interpretation of Daoism, nationalism, and capitalism.  It wasn’t Chuangzi, but it didn’t need to be.  I regretted that I couldn’t read more of this sign or myself.  Next time, perhaps.  We’ll be back.



Sunday, 02/11/18