China really is extraordinary!

OK, this time don't register the mangosteens and instead focus on the bowl.

You've seen them everywhere, right, since they sell in just about every Chinatown store you've ever been into, and you probably have several pieces of your own around the place. No biggie, you're thinking. But you're wrong. They are HUGE!!!

 However, before I tell you exactly why they're extraordinary, I'll tell you what they mean. "Goldfish" in Chinese is "Eu", and "Eu" is also the word for "Abundance", so the idea is this: by placing a goldfish at the bottom of the bowl, when you are down to the last scrap of whatever food you have in this bowl, you see the goldfish and think "Eu" which also registers as "I've had plenty".  It's meant to make you feel full.

But do you know this about these bowls?  When we were in the only-average museum in Saigon, there was this little display case where they'd placed all the contents of a 6000 year old midden (archeologese for "rubbish dump").  And mixed in with all the unfathomable and unknowable broken junk was ... dah dah! ... a broken bowl!  And what was on that bowl?

Yup, one of these exact bowls was found, broken, in a 6000 year old rubbish dump in Vietnam.

A design that old? For something to be around that long? Isn't it extraordinary!  It blows me away.  

And I can't actually decide whether I should view it as a triumph of tradition or as a failure of imagination!  Your choice.