ang3lsh1:

surreality51:

for-the-flail:

Shen Wei: Carefully cooks a wide selection of delicious meals for Zhao Yunlan

Zhao Yunlan: Shoves food on a stick in Shen Wei’s face while sitting on the table

Ha! Never noticed that Zhao Yunlan and Da Qing are sitting on the table like barbarians cats. Bonus: there is an empty chair RIGHT THERE BEHIND YOU, Zhao Yunlan.

I also think it’s telling that Shen Wei is set apart from everyone else. He’s just joined the SID, so he probably still feels like a guest rather than a family member. Everyone else is digging in, stuffing their faces, while he’s sitting there politely and properly, as you do when you’re a guest in someone’s home. Zhao Yunlan is the one who tries to bring him into the fold by offering him a meat stick.

It’s doubly awkward because he is a professor and the kids SID members don’t really know him well yet, so there’s this whole “why are you inviting him to eat garbage food with us?” thing that Zhu Hong voices. Professors are part of a highly respected echelon in Chinese society, so it would be as if you invited your company CEO or the mayor over to eat nachos with you (and not like classy nachos, I’m talking the nachos with the orange cheese goo). Appropriate for you and your hodgepodge SID family, not so appropriate for an esteemed guest.

But that’s just it: Zhao Yunlan doesn’t want Shen Wei to be a guest. He wants Shen Wei to be part of his SID family. So he’s going to treat him like family and invite him over to eat junk food with everyone and drink beer and maybe even get grease on his fingers or his mouth. I love the informality of this little snippet. It’s the equivalent of Zhao Yunlan inviting Shen Wei over to hang out on his couch and watch the game with his buddies.

And poor Shen Wei doesn’t quite know how to handle it yet, because he’s been alone for 10,000 years and has never really had a family or even a friend, and now all of a sudden he’s getting a ridiculous boyfriend and boyfriend’s entire wayward family. So he’s probably feeling a little lost as he sits ramrod straight on his couch island. But then Zhao Yunlan offers him the meat stick/peace offering/bridge, and you can see how even after Shen Wei shakes his head no, Zhao Yunlan just waves it at him and insists. 

Food can have such weighted meaning in Chinese culture. What type of food you serve, who serves food to whom, who gets served first, who gets the choicest morsels, etc. Like, there are rules around this that I had to learn as a kid. In this snippet, Zhao Yunlan ostensibly serves Shen Wei because he’s the host of the gathering, but also to bring Shen Wei into the SID family, get Shen Wei to realize that he’s part of the family now and what that really means, and also for the SID members to view Shen Wei as one of them too. Food is a great way to bring someone into your circle, because food in Chinese culture is communal: everyone grabs from the same serving plates at the center of the table.  

The act of serving food can provide a way to express caring and intimacy. You might pick out the tastiest morsel and put it on your spouse’s or child’s plate to show love, your parent’s plate to show respect, your friend’s plate to show caring, and in more formal occasions, a guest’s plate to show hospitality. This scene is deliberately informal, deliberately familial, so Zhao Yunlan handing food to Shen Wei can be read as a deliberate act of caring, rather than hospitality. Contrast this scene with the formal dinner with Guo Changcheng’s uncle, which is all about hospitality (despite the mickey mouse balloon, omg wtf set designer?!?!), and you can see the stark differences in relationships, intimacy, and who’s in vs who’s out of your family group.

 #I could go on about possible meanings of food in guardian #shen wei cooking for zhao yunlan #no wonder zhao yunlan calls shen wei his wife #i’m having flashbacks to all of my aunts trying to stuff me with food at family dinners #my second aunt still puts food on my cousin’s plate even though he’s 30 #what’s with chinese people and our hyperfixation on food? (via @surreality51)

It’s called loooooooooove. Also the whole every time you call home and your parents are all ‘Have you eaten yet? What did you have for dinner?’

We are a terrible awkward repressed race who can only express our love through food and stuffing loved ones with food and then later complain you’re too skinny/put on weight.