Now that we know that 10,000 Chinese tourists will come to Malta over the next two years, and that the two years after we’ll have a mass stampede of another 40,000, we’d better prepare ourselves. By 2020, every selfie of a group of 10 Maltese people will be photobombed by a Chinese man.
They will come in droves in their suits – have you ever seen a Chinese man in jeans? – and will be exemplary in their way of never contradicting anyone. But for all their smiley nodding, you won’t see them trying out our ħobż biż-żejt or timpana. It is an internationally recorded fact that Chinese tourists don’t really fancy eating European food, and that includes all our tan-Nanna, taz-Zija and tas-Sekond Kuġin ranges of food. They won’t even be lured to listen to the sexy tadam ta’ Malta advert (although they will nod to it). It is the reason why wherever Chinese people settle around the world, a Chinatown sprouts up to cater for their Asiatic tastes.
I’m doing a quick mental calculation: no, there aren’t enough Chinese restaurants in Malta to satisfy 50,000 Chinese – unless, that is, Ċaqnu is planning on turning his MonteCristo into MonteChina.
Groan. Couldn’t we have gone for the Japanese tourist instead? Him the camera-loving one, the one who buys everything under the sun, the one who is always clad in designer clothes, the one who is ideal for generation of economy.
Most importantly, more Japanese tourists would mean more sushi restaurants. Hip hip hurray.
Have you noticed the sudden rise and rise of sushi fans in Malta? I bet you are reading this and either nodding enthusiastically or else going Yeurgh! Because like all umami tastes, sushi is loved or hated; there are no in-betweens.
I first tasted sushi in the early noughties; my mother – always the adventurer in the kitchen – had gone to a course and we were the tasters of her first wobbly-looking nigiri. At first we nibbled at the balls of rice tentatively, then eagerly: from that day on we were sushi converts.
To this day if I know that I’m going to eat the bite-size umami-rich deliciousness, I’ll be in a good mood all day, longing for the smell of caramelised soy; the brain-freezing wasabi; the nigari, the maki, the temaki. Even as I’d be eating them, I’d be drooling.
Like all umami tastes, sushi is loved or hated; there are no in-betweens
But I don’t just like eating it, I particular delight in watching sushi chefs at work. The best restaurants have Japanese chefs who are always so solemn as they put their fingers shaped like Ninja fighters, clench a fist of warm rice and then begin the gentle, rhythmic rolling to make the shape of a mini-loaf.
Roll, squeeze, shape, aim, cut. Roll, squeeze, shape, aim, cut. It’s hypnotic. Maybe it’s meant to be like that: proper sushi chefs have to study for three years before they are allowed to lay hands on the fish (some useless information: in those three years as novices they just get to wash the rice, do the dishes, watch, and erm, meditate).
I also delight in the ritual of eating with chopsticks. A childhood of watching manga animated cartoons made me an expert. I even know how to wolf down a bowl of rice clusters with my eyes shaped in slits in manner of Lotti and Licia and finish off with exactly two rice puffs on my left cheek.
Of course, back in the 1980s when I watched the cartoons, there were no sushi restaurants in Malta. I doubt there were any in Europe actually. Sushi was slow in coming to our continent. I don’t remember coming across sushi restaurants in my youth-travelling days.
Not even James Bond, who loved Japanese sake – when served at exactly 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit – was no fan of sushi. But at long last, at the turn of the millennium, it caught up in the West, and finally here.
So today my question is: can you be on a sushi diet and be fat? Can raw fish and cold rice ever become the new Big Mac, without the side effects? Can sushi become our new ħobż biż-żejt? Seeing as we are the Fat Man of Europe, wouldn’t that be great?
Only 3.6 per cent of Japanese are obese compared to a whopping 35 per cent of Maltese people. In her book First Bite, Bee Wilson says that “Japan is almost the only country that has such low obesity without a starving population”. In fact it is estimated that the only other places in the world that have lower obesity averages than Japan are countries such as Ethiopia and North Korea, where there is widespread hunger and food scarcity.
Look closely, whenever there is a sizeable cross-section of society – a choir, a television audience, a mass congregation – chubbiness is the common factor. Maybe more sushi could be the solution. I say, bring in the Japanese tourists.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti