The various people of the world are united by the fact that they have inevitably known famine in the course of their histories. Scarcity forges bonds. It gives you something to talk about.

The champion of the empty belly is China. That country's past is an uninterrupted sequence of alimentary disasters, with a profusion of death. The first question one chinese person asks another is always: "Have you eaten?"

The Chinese have had to learn to eat the inedible, hence the unparalleled refinement of their culinary arts.

from Amelie Nothomb, The Life of Hunger.