La gula: ¿el pecado original chino?

The bronze rituals vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties are among the most ancient and potent symbols of Chinese civilization. Wine jugs, cooking pots and steamers, they are decorated with geometric designs based on the stylised faces of monstruous animals with curled horns and staring eyes. (…) No one knows exactly what these menacing beasts meant to the people of the Shang and Zhou, but they are known in China as tao tie. This word means, in modern Chinese parlance, ‘a fierce and cruel person, or a glutton’; tao tie was also the name of an ancient villain known for his voracity, according to one antique text. The fierce animal designs of the sacrificial bronzes, one of the most recognisable symbols of Chinese civilisation, have for centuries been bound up with the idea of monstruous greed.

The influential archeologist, K.C. Chang, in an essay on ancient Chinese food history, once suggested that those threatening animal designs may have been emblazoned on the ritual vessels used by the Shang and Zhou ruling classes as a reminder of the dangers of gluttony. Like the memento mori of medieval Europe - those images of death that were intended to remind people of their mortality - they may have been a warning to the ‘meat-eaters’ of their day that greed was monstruous and corrupting.

Fragmento del excelente Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A sweet-sour memoir of eating in China de Fuchsia Dunlop.

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