Chinese Food and the Family Research Assignment Paper - 825 Words

Chinese Food and the Family Research Assignment Paper (Essay Sample) Content: Chinese Food and the FamilyMy NameUniversityCourseInstructorDateIntroductionFood and family are essential for well being of individuals. Families are composed of individuals who eat food. In essence, families and food play a vital role in improving the social, emotional and physical well being in life. In most cases, people assume food is meant to satisfy hunger. However, the role of food in the family stretches further beyond meeting the physical needs. Food is part of our families. In the Chinese society, food is essential in enhancing various beneficial aspects of the family. Family meal times help enhance family relationships, pass cultural practices and ways of life to young ones.Role of Food in the FamilyMeans of passing culture to childrenFoods in the family help parents pass cultural practices and beliefs to their children. Various cultural practices are passed down from parents to children through food preparation and eating. Through family mealtimes, Chinese children get to learn various developmental skills such as how to hold a cup, manipulate the chopsticks, acquire and develop language and furnish literacy skills mainly through the flow of conversation. Chinese people take filial piety as an important aspect of the society. This is enhanced during mealtimes. For example, children get to understand that elder members of the society are served food first. For instance, table talk is the main means through which young children get exposed to the value and nature of family conversation including how to express thoughts, feelings, ideas, complaints and emotions. In China, family food sharing is the universal channel for expressing family fellowship; embody key values such as duty, hospitality, responsibility, appreciation, sacrifice and empathy among children. Sharing meals is not only an opportunity to eat and fill stomachs but also talk of family issues, create bonds of attachment and strengthen familial relationships and friendship. Family members exchange anecdotes, news and stories over family meal times, family members to learn more about each other. Children get to learn about the interests and attitudes of elders. On the other hand, parents get to learn more about the interests of their children. During family mealtimes, parents get to understand the moods, attitudes and needs of their children and hence be in a position to identify and solve their problems. In China, family mealtimes are feted as supremely important aspects of family life.Family Meals benefit ChildrenFamily mealtimes provide priceless opportunities for socialization of children. Through family meals, children are introduced to the conventional rules and norms of what is considered as socially accepted behavior. In addition, family meals provide a prime setting for conveying to the children important family values and expectations. Moreover parents and seniors get the opportunity to teach school going children foods which are considered c ulturally acceptable (Fieldhouse, 2003). Children get to understand what is considered as food and what is regarded as non-food. In essence, family meal times provide family members with the opportunity teach children the various healthy food choices available to them cost effectively. Care givers teach and encourage children to take health food choices and behaviors through modeling. Child...

The Character of Phaedra - Literature Essay Samples

In the play Hippolytus, Euripides depicts characters in a realistic fashion by displaying their warring emotions in the wake of dramatic events, as well as their deceit in achieving their objectives. A prime example of such tactics is the character Phaedra, who is content to suffer until death due to the shame of her forbidden desires for her stepson. However, when the nurse unveils her secret, Phaedra devises a scheme to ruin his reputation to save her own. Up to the creation of the letter for the stepson’s downfall, Euripides has the audience sympathize with Phaedra, leading us to understand her grieving over her love-stricken heart. At first, Phaedra yearns for the same nature and hunt that she knows Hippolytus is partaking in, largely because of the common desire to be near the person that one loves. Phaedra then becomes more conscious of her rapture and is consumed by shame for wanting Hippolytus. Afterward, the audience is allowed to watch her go back and forth regarding the question of whether her sinful desires are results of the sins of the women in her family or are prompted by the Goddess Cypris. Lastly, Phaedra uses deceit to protect her reputation from being tarnished after she dies. Therefore, Euripides uses natural characteristics of humans uncontrollable desire, shame, the need to find explanations, and the survival of one’s good reputation to make Phaedra a dynamic character and to invoke sympathy in the audience for Phaedra. In the opening act of Hippolytus, Hippolytus is hunting â€Å"wild beasts with his fleet hounds† (31) and honoring the Goddess Artemis with a â€Å"†¦woven wreath, culled from a virgin meadow†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (32). Immediately following this scene, the audience observes Phaedra pining for a similar meadow, place among pine trees â€Å"†¦where hounds pursue the prey, hard on the scent of dappled fawns†¦Ã¢â‚¬ , and to also â€Å"†¦hark them on, to grasp the barbed dart, to poise Thessalian hunting-spears close to [her] golden hair, then let them fly†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (34). Phaedra’s eagerness to be at such a place and partake in the same hunt that Hippolytus does is an indication that she wants to be near and interact with Hippolytus due to her desire for him. Euripides introduces this natural yearning as her first depiction of love for him most likely because it is the easiest symptom of love that many can identify with themselves. In turn, this causes t he audience to see themselves in Phaedra and feel as if this could have easily been one of them struck by Aphrodite’s power and uncontrollably in love with someone they shouldn’t. As Phaedra comes to her senses and realizes her infatuation has been dictating her thoughts, she is filled with shame multiple times; she says, â€Å"†¦the tire on my head is too heavy to wear†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (34) and â€Å"Shame fills me for the words I have spoken. Hide me then; from my eyes the tear-drops stream, and for very shame I turn them away† (35). Due to her disgust with her desires, Phaedra becomes a figure of pity; she knows her love for her stepson is wrong and would rather suffer and shame herself than act upon it. This strong quality of choosing death over forbidden love makes Phaedra admirable to the audience. In response to her unjust fate in the universe, Phaedra begins to imagine why she may have possibly deserved such an end. She explores different angles of her reasoning, and the audience sympathizes with trying to understand why something bad might happen to someone, accessing the thoroughly human instinct to find an origin for unexplained tragedies. Phaedra contemplates that it is because of her mother’s â€Å"love for the bull† (37) which cursed her sister and made her become â€Å"the third to suffer† (37). This â€Å"curse from time long past† (37) is not the only reason she thinks may have caused her fate. Phaedra also blames Goddess Cypris when she says that she has gone â€Å"Mad! Mad! Stricken by some demon’s curse!† (35) and asks Aphrodite, â€Å"How can these [sinners]†¦e’er look their husbands in the face? do they never feel one guilty thrill that their accomplice, night, or the chambers of their house will find a voic e and speak?† (38). With these lines, Euripides gives the audience the dilemma of choosing whether it is truly due to Aphrodite or the sins of Phaedra’s mother. After Phaedra mentions the possible chance of the chambers of a woman’s home finding a voice and speaking of sinful affairs, the worst possible alternative befalls Phaedra when the nurse tells Hippolytus of his stepmother’s desires. After hearing Hippolytus’ harsh reply, the audience feels pity for Phaedra because she has not acted on her passion and had resigned herself to death before being unfaithful; however, she will soon endure a tarnished reputation because of her servant’s lack of honesty. Therefore, when Phaedra commits suicide and ruins her stepson’s reputation with a letter that â€Å"loudly tells a hideous tale† (46) to save her own, the audience does not condemn her for her desperate actions though they are not excusable either. In demonstrating the natural characteristics of humans, especially when it comes to love and the survival of their reputation, Euripides creates a character who is changes in reaction to her fate. Though Phaedra performs a harrowing deed, the audience still sympathizes with her uncontrollable desire, shame, and quest to find reason between man or the Gods for her fate. We can understand, at least, her desperate need to protect her reputation. Works Cited Euripides. The Trojan Women and Hippolytus. Trans. Edward P. Coleridge. Mineola: Dover Publications, 2002. Print.