Char Kuey Teow and Ecclesiastes 2:18-20

It is uncontroversial to posit as an axiom (at least among Malaysians) that the food in Penang is delicious. Every few years I would take a road trip with family (and one year with friends) to keep our palate constantly refreshed by the taste of Penang. Being alive for slightly over a couple decades, the quality of food in my opinion has been rather consistent. However, the same cannot be said for my grandparents.

Our constant chats in the car journey there often involve deciding which hawker stall to order food from. One common point in the conversation that comes up is that the quality of food has declined, compared to the past when either the cook's parent or grandparent was running the stall. Comments to this effect were laid against most of the ‘famous’ and ‘touristy’ stalls that were suggested to be visited. Of course, this phenomenon may be simply rhetoric of the “Good Ol’ Days” which we not only the most senior, but all of us are guilty of. In any case, the taste of food is subjective and many people would disagree with my grandparents’ taste buds. But assuming my grandparents are right, the implications of their observation may run deep into questions of work and identity.

In Ecclesiastes 2:18-20, the fictional character Qoheleth, which as Timothy Keller notes may be translated from Hebrew as “the Teacher“ or “The Philosopher”, ponders the state of his “toil”:

18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. (emphasis added)

The bolded words are two reasons why the Qoheleth “hated” his “toil”. Both these reasons are seldom thought of in the fast-paced productivity culture characteristic of our working lives. This too is the nature of the hawker culture in Penang, with tourist swarming stalls waiting for their steaming hot fresh-out-of-the-wok plate of delicious Char Kuey Teow. Things move so quickly that slowing down is rare. But if we actually manage to stop and ponder the reasons raised by the Qoheleth, we may realise that they may be breathtakingly true.

In admitting that he “must leave” his work to another who comes after him, the Qoheleth recognises the inevitability of retirement and subsequently worldly death. Likewise, there will be one who comes after him. The one who comes after him may be his child or protege, to relieve their parent or mentor of their role. It may also very well be a younger and more energised stall owner finding his way into the market for Char Kuey Teow because of the departure of his older counterpart. There must be a day where the ‘legacy’ of work ends, and we are gradually heading towards it.

Even if the one who continues the work is the hawker's child or protege, the second concern of the Qoheleth comes into play. Are they “wise” or are they a “fool”? Would the Char Kuey Teow stall thrive with customers or fall into the irrelevant. Training may go some way towards affecting the outcome, but it is not conclusive. Overall, he cannot really know. Of course, the stark contrast and the strong connotations of “wise” and “fool” do not reflect the individual capabilities of incumbents. Rather, the two are spectrums, laid out by the Qoheleth, to illustrate the simple point that we do not know where on the spectrum the ‘newcomer’ would lie on, yet this ‘newcomer’ would be the “master of all” he toiled for.

The word “toil” itself has strong denotations. Based on the NAS Exhaustive Concordance, the root word for toil is amal, which translates from Hebrew into “trouble” or “labor”. How interesting it is that “trouble” connotes a degree of inconvenience while “labor” is the word used to describe the painstaking effort needed for the birth of a child! The work the Qoheleth is describing is not something minor, but something he has put a significant amount of effort into.

Back to the critique by my grandparents. If they were right, the Qoheleth point is justified. Note that over the span of their lives they have tried many restaurants. The burden of proof is in their favour as they only need to be right once (however that is defined, perhaps by consensus or a well renowned food critic?). Just once and the Qoheleth is justified in hating toil. Furthermore, surely my grandparents alone are not the only food critiques. All of us on a daily basis will either tell another or at the very least ourselves that this same meal from this same stall “was nicer last time”. Even though I said that the Char Kuey Teow quality was “consistent”, the very fact that I am able to express that conclusion is because I had prior standards to compare the subsequent dishes upon.

So if the Qoheleth is right, what now? We cannot ignore him or dismiss the argument as ‘merely his opinion’ because his reasons are grounded in truth. We will all retire or die and we do not know how another person will manage the work we do. At the same time, we do not and cannot sit idly in despair, because we have to work for our living and sustainability. Perhaps then we may consider the solution found in the Qoheleth’s reflection at the end of Ecclesiastes 2:

24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

Perhaps it is best to enjoy our “toil”, by eating and drinking the fruit of our labour. The Char Kuey Teow stall owner, though labouring hard to produce the best recipe, should at the end of the busy day be happy with the revenue he earned. The money then used for daily sustenance or perhaps to purchase a plate of his own Char Kuey Teow with pride in its quality. Pride because it was produced through his hard work, and should now be enjoyed.

That said, the Qoheleth’s reflections above should not be understood as advocating blissful ignorance. The Qoheleth recognised the provision of God, i.e. the “hand of God” where both the fruit of labour and this philosophy of labour originates. Indeed, “apart” from God, the wisdom of this perspective on work does not lie (Ecclesiastes 2:26). On our own, “toil” is to be hated because no matter how much harvest we gather from it, our worldly lives are not permanent (Ecclesiastes 1:3-11). But when we work for one who is permanent, so permanent are the fruits of our labour.

This blog post is largely inspired by “Every Good Endeavour” by Tim Keller and the podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. This writer is hugely appreciative of them and recommends their laborious work to all readers.

This blog post is not intended to insult any Char Kuey Teow vendors, or Char Kuey Teow in general, nor any Singaporean Char Kuey Teow cooks.