Rather apposite, it reminds me of my piece on the cross-Channel ferries china debris…
In the 1990s, when I travelled around Hunan by train, there were vendors at rail-way stations with trolleys full of steamers stacked with food: for a modest sum, you would pick up a small, rough terracotta bowl of rice and another containing a dish, eat them on the train and then throw the (‘biodegradable’ sic) bowls out of the window when you’d finished. The railway tracks were lined with a rubble of smashed terracotta bowls © Fuchsia Dunlop, 2023, “Invitation to a Banquet”
Val and I are not 100% convinced by the ‘bio-degradeable’ claim to be honest; whilst a bowl that had been allowed to dry out, leather-hard or firmer would certainly work as a container for a quick meal — such as she describes — and piles of smashed clay would — eventually — return to the earth from which they were made. it’d be a slow, slow old process. Not ‘forever’ polluting, that I accept but…
Anyway, gives me a chance to try out another AI image generator.
I’m grateful to m’learned friend for her valued and expert input xx
I’m with you Chris an unfired bowl may hold dry ingredients but nothing with liquid no matter how long it had been dried for……
The bowls on the track looked fired albeit maybe only once.
Can’t see how the would be biodegradable though.
Entertaining thought though 🤣
Gay x