He held open the metal swing door for her to walk in ahead of him. She caught her breath. She had been in a lot of kitchens, but this one was stunningly organized. Every inch of wall was lined with shelves that held bowls and containers and bottles and jars filled with pastes, sauces, and spices. Down one side ran two Western-style restaurant stoves and a formidable line of wok rings. Behind were the large refrigerators and prep sinks. An island formed a raised counter down the center, with three cutting boards that were polished, circular slabs of tree trunk. “You have really thought things out.”
“I had great teachers.”
“Who were?”
“My uncles. Two here, one in Hangzhou.”
“It’s a beautiful kitchen.” She eased toward a stool that was tucked under one end of the island. “And I meant what I said, I don’t want to hold you up. Go to work. Shall I just sit over here?”
“You can sit there. That’s fine. How long have you been in Beijing?”
“This is my second day.”
“What do you think of the food?”
She looked up, face brightening. “Amazing! I’ve had only a few meals so far, mind you, but it hasn’t been like any Chinese food I ever tasted. Not that I’m an expert.”
“You don’t write about Asian food?”
“No.” Maggie dug her little book out of her bag along with her pen. “I do American food, and not the haute stuff, either – everyday food, regional food, the human story – you know, cook-offs, fairs. Festivals.”
“What a lot of people really eat,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“To the Chinese way of thinking that can be very profound. We have a long tradition of valuing the rustic. Of all food we find it the closest to nature, the most human. How long have you been doing it?”
“Twelve years.”
He studied her. “So why’d they choose you for this?”
“Because I had to come anyway.”
“Right. You said something about other business.”
“I did,” she said, and moved on. The less he knew about that, the better. With him she had a job to do. Besides, nothing made her appear old and pitiful faster than saying she was a widow; she had seen this fact clearly since Matt’s death. “To your question, though. To me the Chinese food here is completely different. I may not be a specialist, but, I mean – I work for a food magazine, for God’s sake. I have eaten in my share of Chinese restaurants. And what I’ve had all my life does not taste like what I’ve had here. Not even remotely.”
“But anybody who knows the food here could have told you that.”
“Really?” She folded back the book to a clean page.
“Chinese-American is a different cuisine. It’s really nothing like Chinese-Chinese. It has its charms, no question. But it’s not the same.”
“How?”
“Chinese-American evolved for a different reason – to get Americans to accept a fundamentally different way of cooking and eating. They did this by aiming at familiarity, which was kind of weirdly brilliant. From the time the first chop suey houses opened, that’s what they were selling, the thing that seems exotic but is actually familiar. Reliable. Not fast food, but reliable in the same way as fast food. Here it’s different. It’s the opposite. Every dish has to be unique, different from every other. Yet all follow rigid principles, and all aim to accomplish things Western cuisine doesn’t even shoot for, much less attain.”
She was scribbling as fast as she could.
“I’d better get to work,” he said. He lifted an apron from a hook on the wall, looped it over his head, and tied it. He turned his back to her and stood still for a second, head bent, silent.
She stared at his ponytailed black hair for a second, and went on writing. Casts his eyes down while he ties his apron. Looking for something, like an anchor falling, seeking the depths. She watched, saying nothing.
First he piled plump shrimp in a colander and tumbled them under cold water, then worked a towel through them until they were dry. In went egg white, salt, and something squeaky-powdery that looked like cornstarch. She watched his brown knuckles, lean and knobby, flash in the mixture. He slid it into the refrigerator and washed his hands. “Now,” he said.
She liked that he had turned his back to her to work. It was good that he was comfortable with her here. That made her feel at ease too. He seemed to be finished with the shrimp, at least for the moment, so she ventured another question. “You said Chinese cuisine in China tries to accomplish certain things.”
“Yes.”
“Things that set it apart from the cuisines of the West?”
“Yes.” He thought. “For one thing, we have formal ideals of flavor and texture. Those are the rigid principles I mentioned. Each one is like a goal that every chef tries to reach – either purely, by itself, or in combination with the others. Then there’s artifice. Western food doesn’t try to do much with artifice at all.”
“Artifice.” She wanted to make sure she heard him right.
“Artifice. Illusion. Food should be more than food; it should tease and provoke the mind. We have a lot of dishes that come to the table looking like one thing and turn out to be something else. The most obvious example would be a duck or fish that is actually vegetarian, created entirely from soy and gluten, but there are many other types of illusion dishes. We strive to fool the diner for a moment. It adds a layer of intellectual play to the meal. When it works, the gourmet is delighted.”
“Okay,” she said, “artifice.”
“Call it theater. Chinese society’s all about theater. Not just in food. Then there’s healing. We use food to promote health. I’m not talking about balanced nutrition – every cuisine does that, to some degree. I’m talking about each food having a specific medicinal purpose. We see every ingredient as having certain properties – hot, cold, dry, wet, sour, spicy, bitter, sweet, and so on. And we think many imbalances are caused by these properties being out of whack. So a cook who is adept can create dishes that will heal the diner.”
“You mean cure illness?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that. People have mental and emotional layers to their problems, too. The right foods can ease the mind and heart. It’s all one system.”
“You cook like that?” she said. “You yourself?”
“Not really. It’s a specialty.”
“Okay,” she said, writing it down. “Healing.” As if food can heal the human heart. “Is that it?”
“One more. The most important one of all. It’s community. Every meal eaten in China, whether the grandest banquet or the poorest lunch eaten by workers in an alley – all eating is shared by the group.”
“That’s true all over the world,” she protested.
“No.” He looked at her, and for the first time she saw a coolness in his face. He didn’t like her disagreeing. “We don’t plate. Almost all other cuisines do. Universally in the West, they plate. Think about it.”
“Well…” That was true. Every Chinese restaurant she’d ever been to had put food in the middle of the table. “I concede,” she said. She was going to write Does not like to be crossed but instead wrote All food is shared, because it was true. He was right.
Now he had taken a rack of pork ribs out of a plastic bag of marinade and was cleaving them off one after another. His tree trunk barely shuddered. She watched him swing his arm and his shoulder. He was wiry but strong. “Your grandfather was a chef,” she said.
“Right.”
“And your father too?”
She saw him hesitate just a moment before resuming. So – some problem there. “Yes.”
“Then he was the one who taught you to cook?”
“No. My father stopped cooking when he went to America. I learned here.”