When you do the work I do, you quickly learn that the more “personal” an item is, the more it reveals the truth about someone. Among the most personal things we own and use are those we put inside our bodies, or place inside our mouths, or that our bodies absorb—food, drinks, pills, toothbrushes and even the weather. On the basis of this equation, a banana is more “personal” than, say, a pair of shoes, in the same way a frozen TV dinner is more personal than a coat, a hat or a pair of gloves. In this case, the most critical clue about Chinese behavior—and how the Chinese assessed the quality
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