Food Associated with the Spiritual World

In the article "Home Run" and "Eating White", both Ahn and  Nicholson used food as a bridge to their spiritual world. More specifically, food could be closely connected with ethnic bearing and the roof of ancients. Moreover, the color, shape and taste of a special kind of food could recall people's memory-a unique time period with special people or special thing. In my point, food as a crucial part of culture, could be used to transmit belief, spirit, ethnic bearing and feelings. Especially, I could understand Ahn's feeling because I have a similar experience as an international student in America.

Furthermore, there are some differences between Ahn and Nicholson's experience. To be specific, Ahn wanted to show the Korean culture to his son by cooking Korean food, learning Korean, dinning in the Korean restaurants. Because he didn't want to lost the connection between his ethnic and family, especially the new generation. Ahn wanted to pass on the traditions from his ethnic to his son. However, Nicholson found and ate "white food" because Nicholson missed his mother who liked "white food" for her whole life. "White food" as a kind of "comfort food" became a path to his mom when he miss his mom.

The two stories from Ahn and Nicholson remind me my feeling after I left my hometown and came to America. To be honest, I didn't miss my hometown a lot in the past 7 month because new things happened everyday in America and I felt excited about all of them. However, everything changed after one of my friends took me to a Chinese restaurant which provides customers Yunnan rice noodle. My hometown (Yunnan. China) is the original area for producing rice noodle. Rice noodle in my hometown is always more resilient and smooth than other area and I always enjoy eating it. I have to admit that the color, flavor, smell of rice noodle here is exactly the same with rice noodle from my hometown. The image that my mom was cooking rice noodle for me came to my mind. Then I felt sad and I told my friend I started to miss my hometown after that dinner. 

I do believe there is a close connection between the food and our spiritual world. Also, food culture need to be passed on and protected.