The round banquet table and its lazy Susan are packed with dishes, laid out on a yellow silken cloth. Some hold great hunks of meat and poultry; others are filled with smaller slices, cubes and kernels, the various shapes of root vegetables, tubers, terrines and dumplings. A few wine glasses, a bottle of red wine and a clay vessel of Maotai liquor stand among the plates and bowls.
At first glance, it all looks rather appetising. But the dining table is enclosed in glass and stands in the foyer of the Ningxia Museum in Yinchuan in northern China. And on closer inspection, the feast isn’t actually edible, because every morsel on the table is some sort of rock: the chunks of layered pork belly, the buns in their bamboo steamer, the halved preserved duck eggs, the jellied terrine with its wavy opaque strips of pork skin. For years I’ve wanted to see a “strange stone banquet” (qishi yan), and now one stands before me.
The colours and textures of the stones, from bacon-pink to dark beef-jerky brown, their shapes and their textures, whether porous, layered, matte, rippled or pitted, are wildly expressive of different types of foods. It’s as if Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti have collaborated on dinner. On top of the glass case, a sign announces the exhibit as a Man-Han Banquet (man han quanxi), a reference to the legendary Qing Dynasty feast said to have featured the finest delicacies of both the Han Chinese people and their Manchu overlords. Another sign advertises a local “strange stones market”. There’s a phone number you can call.