Should we do more to feed the mind?

Although it was raining, the weather was failing to dent the passion for crawfish in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province.

The crawfish restaurant I visited opened at 4:30 pm, but some diners had arrived before 4 pm, hoping to secure a table before the eatery became packed.

It was not long before the 40-plus tables were all occupied. Diners came and left, but there was no sign of the crowds waiting outside thinning when I departed at about 8 pm.

This scenario was also played out at other crawfish restaurants nearby. A local friend told me it is not unusual for people to wait two hours for a table.

The bustling scene stood in stark contrast to that in the bookstores I visited on my previous visit to Wuhan for a story on the sharp fall in the number of bookstores in the city, which boasts the larget number of university students in China.

Although one of the bookstores I went to is just outside the prestigious Wuhan University, it did not attract many readers. The manager told me that not only had many bookstores near the university closed down, most of those that remained had turned to selling textbooks for examinations to make a profit.

On this visit, however, I soon found that the busy scene at the crawfish restaurant paled in comparison with that at restaurants in Qianjiang, a city 150 kilometers west of Wuhan and a major domestic crawfish supplier.

As darkness fell, hundreds of people were seated outside a restaurant I also visited in a small area of Qianjiang. This area alone boasts more than 10 such eateries. A match in the World Cup soccer tournament was being shown on a big screen on the wall of a seven-story building. The red cooked crawfish and the yellow containers for beer stood out.

Diners cheered as a band playing electric guitars sang popular songs. Some raised their voices to sing along, while others shouted and applauded as they watched the match. The place was really humming.

The restaurant has more than 200 tables and can seat about 2,000 people. The scale and popularity of the crawfish eateries may differ, but many diners come from dozens, even hundreds, of kilometers away to enjoy the cuisine.

It is good to see such bustling scenes, which showcase China’s economic vitality. After decades of development, most Chinese now eat and dress well. Instead of eating merely to survive, dining has increasingly become an important way for people to enjoy life.

However, the stark contrast between the scenes at the crawfish restaurants and the bookstores made me think. Should we Chinese do more to nourish the mind?

For example, when visiting Qianjiang, we could also visit the museum for Cao Yu, one of China’s greatest 20th-century playwrights.

Qianjiang, dubbed the “hometown of crawfish” because of its large output, is also the dramatist’s hometown.