A full stomach and a few words of wisdom

So today I we went to our first Chinese cooking class. It was an awesome experience to say the least. The two dishes that we watched Lu A Yi (The equivalent of Auntie in Chinese) make for us were Tomatoes mixed with Egg and Green Peppers and sliced pork—two dishes that my mother has made at home many times, but it was still fun to watch her cook them. Throughout the process, Uncle Hu, her husband, would comment on her technique; sometimes he would shout out, “Wait! Let it cook for a little more! Or he might say, add some more sugar! Less Salt

!” The back and forth dialogue between husband and wife was touching, you could tell from there banter that they had been through a lot together and as a relationship was quite strong. I couldn’t help feeling a bit homesick for my own parents and at the same time I was surprised to find that their interaction seemed strikingly similar to my parents; “perhaps all seasoned Chinese couples act the same,” I thought to myself.

Dinner was a humble but delicious feast; there were three other dishes in addition to the two she made in front of us—apparently there was one more fried chicken dish, but she thought that that might be overdoing it so she didn’t put it on the table. There was a shredded red radish that had a sweet and sour tangy taste; it added a nice balance to the other dishes allowing one to clear ones palette of the fairly strong pork and egg taste of the other two dishes; there was also a dish of Chinese style pork chops and cooked green beans and garlic. Aside from blue, the other two primary colors were represented at the dinner table; Lu A Yi said that in Chinese cooking, color combinations is just as important as smell and taste—one cannot mix colors haphazardly and hope to create an appetizing dish.

The first five minutes was characterized by a rapid rate of food intake; afterwards, the rate gradually decreased until we had almost completely cleared the two dishes that Lu A Yi had made for us. After we had finished eating, we continued to chat with the couple for another hour and a half. They had two sons, both of whom still lived at home; the younger one had studied in Japan for five years and was now working in advertising. The conversation really got interesting when the father started to talk about their life during the cultural revolution; at that time they had finished high school and had already begun attending college when Mao decided to put the entire country on hold; as a result, colleges classes were halted and for a period of two years, from 1966 to the end of 1967, college students engaged in what is known as the Red Guard Movement. The way Uncle Hu described it, the Red Guard Movement was nothing more than two years of name calling; students fought for the right to be called true revolutionaries, which was in response to Mao’s call for reform and for the country’s youth to experience what real revolution was about. Uncle Hu and his wife decided that they would move to the north east tip of China, to the rural farming villages, to taste the hardships of rural life (chi ku 吃苦) Hearing about how they devoted ten years of their lives to back breaking work in a place that could get as cold as -38 degrees Celsius made me ask the question: “Looking back, Do you regret your decision?” Uncle Hu responded resolutely, “No.” In those ten years, he learned how to live by his own to hands and he also learned how to deal with people; he said that because of those years out in the bitter cold of the north eastern China, he was an extremely good judge of character. “When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, nothing gets past you and nothing scares you; when something that would scare any normal person away came my way, I wouldn’t think anything of it.”

As he was telling the story of their time during the Cultural Revolution, I couldn’t help chuckling to myself in amazement at the similarities between Uncle Hu’s perspective on life and my father’s.

He said that when you do something that you really want to do, in the end you won’t regret it; even though life was physically hard and the living conditions weren’t superb, they were still happy. He told us that everyone has their own hardships: even though your stomach and wallet may be full, emotionally you might not be content. I resonated with those words and started thinking about the idea of happiness being relative.

The night ended with us leaving on account of having to get back to study. I walked away from that dinner with my small notebook full of Chinese dishes, phrases and notes reminding me of the conversation. Not only did leave their house with a full stomach, but I left also with a new sense of confidence for the path that I am charting out for myself.