Introducing the Cook

Ah Ra, the cook, Shanghai

Let us now meet Ah Ra the cook. There he is on his way to or from the marketplace carrying the basket containing the daily food purchases. Yes, doubtless everything had to be purchased fresh in Shanghai, China, what with the scarcity of refrigerators in the early part of the century and previously. Where is the footprint of modern technology in his traditional garb and possibly hair in pigtail? Where is the car for driving to the market? Did he walk all the way there and all the way back every day? Yes, poor Ah Ra the cook. These people of old China worked so hard for so little.

We forget sometimes how fortunate we are here in the United States. Which reminds me that I once attended a week long conference in Chicago. My roommate that week was from Kansas City and whined and complained the whole time about how her husband, a Chinese man, a cook, was not treated as well as ought to be expected by the pastor and white men of the church they attended even though he sometimes cooked for church events. As if that were anything unusual. And you were expecting streets paved with gold here in America? Did you think that we had already arrived in heaven? No, this is not heaven and every luxury that we enjoy now is the result of a lot of hard work and ingenuity of the American people even though the convenience of cars and refrigerators is now taken for granted. It is not a right or entitlement that I should have to sit here listening to what's-her-name from Kansas City complaining about something to which she and her husband are not entitled. Let us not forget that a cook is just a cook. We all have our places in life and the cook is not the king. Just be grateful that you are not starving along with the millions dying in China.