An American with Chinese ancestry told media this week that he has eaten at over 7,800 different Chinese restaurants, mostly in the U.S.. Mr. Chan is 72 now, and has been keeping a record of all the different Chinese restaurants he has visited since the 1960s, when he became interested in exploring his cultural heritage.
You’ve got to admire the tenacity of Mr. Chan. If you were to go to a different Chinese restaurant every night of the week for ten whole years, you would still not have eaten at half the number of Chinese restaurants that he has. Would you really never once fancy some pasta, or cous cous, or sushi instead?
And also, if your goal is to explore your Chinese heritage, and you still haven’t satisfied yourself after thousands of hours spent sitting in front of plates of fried rice and dim sum, mightn’t you be going about it the wrong way? Perhaps Mr. Chan could have used some of the hours spent in restaurants reading Confucius and Sun Tzu, or practicing calligraphy instead.
And I wonder what happens to a man who has had 7,800 fortune cookies? Isn’t he tempting fate? One day a really unlucky fortune cookie will just say, “In ten seconds you will die from an overdose of prawn crackers!”
Good luck, Mr. Chan. It’s nice to have a passion in life.
Vocabulary:
to have (Chinese) ancestry – for your
parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents, etc., to have come from (China),
even if you may have been born elsewhere
your cultural heritage – the culture that
is passed down to you from earlier generations, such as your parents
tenacity – the property of continuing,
without giving up
to fancy something – to feel like
something; to have a slight desire for something
to tempt fate – for superstitious people,
to act in a way that might cause a supernatural power to want to cause you
harm. For example, boasting about how
lucky you are might be seen as tempting fate, since the jealous gods might want
to give you bad luck instead.
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