The Last Chinese Chef - By Nicole Mones Page 0,123
as they piled ingredients on top of their congee, and the Chinese conversation burst forth like birds from a box. She loved the sound of it. If she learned the language, if she understood it, would it still be so? Would she feel loosed from her old fetters whenever she heard it, freshly born? Maybe. Maybe more so.
She mixed her congee with her spoon and tasted it. Oh, so good. She shivered. The salty and piquant flavors against the delicate fragrance of rice, the crispy fish against the tofu and the soft gruel. Sheer goodness. She caught Sam’s eye and said one word, “Wonderful.”
The uncles agreed. “I would come back from the dead for this,” said Jiang. “What is that poem? The one that calls back the soul to the table?”
“Oh! From the Zhou Dynasty,” said Tan.
To their surprise, it was Liang Yeh who started to intone, in English.
“O Soul, come back! Why should you go far away?
All kinds of good foods are ready:
rice, broom-corn, early wheat, mixed with yellow millet —
He could not remember the next line. Jiang murmured to him in Chinese, and he continued:“Ribs of the fatted ox, tender and succulent;
Sour and bitter blended in the soup of Wu.
O Soul, come back and do not be afraid.”
“Ah, the soup of Wu,” said Tan as he ate his congee. Wu was the archaic word for the region around Hangzhou, which made the connection to their friend’s death complete.
“To Uncle Xie,” Sam said, raising his teacup. They drank.
After this Sam refilled their bowls from the tureen and the condiments went around again.
“You are a great chef,” Liang Yeh said to his son.
“Thanks,” Sam said, reddening. He caught Maggie’s eye. This was the moment for him, she understood. More than the prize. More than the restaurant.
“You are! I saw three nights ago. We all saw.”
“Yes,” said Jiang and Tan, on top of each other. “We did.”
Under the table she touched his knee. He caught her hand and held it.
Liang Yeh could feel the current between them. “Now, we must take your lady friend to the temple. What do you say? I am happy to go again this very week.”
“She’s leaving in a few days,” said Sam.
“Leaving? No! She just arrived! Isn’t that true?” He addressed himself to Maggie. “Didn’t you just arrive?”
“More or less,” she said. “But I have to go back. I have a job.”
His face fell.
Sam said, “Dad, it’s okay.”
“I know.” Liang Yeh raised a hand. “Because you will return.” He touched Maggie’s arm lightly. “Isn’t it so? Won’t you be back? Very soon?”
All of them were watching her.
She sneaked a look at Sam. His face was full and unafraid. Go ahead, he seemed to be telling her, say it. Tell them.
“I think so,” she said. “Yes.”
“Good. You see?” said Liang Yeh. His eyes crinkled with gladness as he took slivers of ham and greens and added them to Sam’s bowl, and put another scoop of the crisp silver fish in hers. “Now eat, children. Another day lies ahead.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Last Chinese Chef is a work of fiction, yet the Chinese culinary world that comes to life in its pages is real. I could never have captured it without the help of many Chinese who shared their knowledge, analyses, reminiscences, and recipes, nor could I have written it without the published works of literary gourmets, culinary thinkers, and food-obsessed poets dating back through the centuries.
In a deeper sense my research began thirty years ago when I started doing business in China. Arriving there to buy woolen textiles in 1977, just six weeks after the Cultural Revolution had formally ended, I sat down to my first government-arranged banquet and found my mind and senses exploded by a cuisine more exciting, diverse, and subtle than any Chinese food I had encountered in America. Real cuisine was available to only a handful of people in China then, for the country’s population was not only poor but traumatized by a long era of successive terrors that had turned many of life’s pleasures, including food, into ideological evils. At a time when most people around me had limited choices and rationed food, I, as the guest of one of China’s large state-owned enterprises, was given many opportunities in those first few years to experience a cuisine that was as fantastic as it was — to me, an inexperienced young woman trying desperately to figure out how to do business in a socialist country — incomprehensible.