Dumpling Days

by Grace Lin

  “Pizza?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “Ki-Ki! Don’t pick pizza!” Lissy said. “We’re in Taiwan—you have to pick a Chinese food!”

  “You don’t have to,” Uncle Flower said. “There are all kinds of food here in Taipei. We have McDonald’s—all that American food, if you want. But Taiwan has the best Japanese and Chinese food—sushi, ramen…”

  “Dumplings?” I asked. I remembered how I had mixed up Taiwan being bao dao to jiaozi, which was a kind of Chinese dumpling. And it was also my favorite Chinese food to eat.

  “Dumplings!” Uncle Flower said. “Taiwan has the best dumplings in the world!”

  Uncle Flower, Auntie Jin, Mom, and Dad began to speak in Taiwanese to one another really fast. We knew they were all talking about food, and their words sounded like clicking chopsticks. All that talk was making me hungry. I wondered what the best dumplings in the world tasted like.

  The bus stopped, and we all got off. So this was Taiwan. I looked at the gray buildings towering overhead and the people and taxis and motor scooters rushing by all around us. So far, all I could tell of Taiwan was that it was very busy. As Dad, Auntie Jin, and Uncle lifted our luggage from the bus, I nudged Mom.

  “What’s Uncle’s name?” I asked her.

  “Uncle?” Mom said. “It’s Li-Li. He’s Uncle Li-Li.”

  “Lily!” Ki-Ki and I laughed, and Lissy shouted, “I told you he was Uncle Flower!”

  Chapter 4

  DAD AND UNCLE FLOWER LUGGED OUR SUITCASES UP the stairs behind us while we walked into a roomful of aunties and uncles waiting with hugs. Grandma’s and Grandpa’s faces wrinkled with smiles as they squeezed each of us at the same time. Although we hadn’t seen Grandma and Grandpa in a long time, they still looked the same to me. But we looked different to them. “So tall now!” Grandma said to me, and “Young lady,” Grandpa said to Lissy.

  There were new cousins, too. One by one, they were introduced to us. Some were just babies, but there were two who were about our age. I couldn’t remember everyone’s Chinese names right, so I just made up names that sounded close to them. Everyone laughed when I called the sharp-faced boy with the laughing eyes Shogun instead of Xiaoquan and changed his sister’s name, Chulian, to Julian. But they didn’t really seem to mind, and they still answered when I spoke to them. Shogun was Lissy’s age, and Julian was in between my age and Ki-Ki’s.

  “Speak in English!” Aunt Bea urged them, but they just smiled at us bashfully. “They learn English in school,” she told us. “But now they’re shy!” She turned to them again. “You can do it!”

  Julian looked back and forth like there was a fly in the room. “Hello!” she said finally, and then looked at Shogun for help. He gave a mischievous smile.

  “Okay!” he said loudly, and then started to laugh.

  “That’s it?” Aunt Bea said. Shogun and Julian nodded and laughed harder, and Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I joined in, too. I didn’t know if we would be able to talk to the cousins, but I knew I liked them.

  “Can you say something in Chinese back?” Auntie Jin asked us. Lissy and Ki-Ki shook their heads hard. We never spoke Chinese in New Hartford, not in school or at home. We didn’t know any Chinese words. Well, no, that wasn’t true. I did know one Chinese word.

  “Jiaozi?” I said.

  “Dumplings!” Auntie Jin whooped, and everyone laughed. “I guess that means we should go and eat!”

  Everyone laughed again, and the adults began talking about the where and how of dumplings. Finally, something was agreed on, and we followed Grandma, Grandpa, Auntie Jin, and Uncle Flower down the stairs.

  Uncle Flower stopped two taxis for us, and we got in.

  “Grandma doesn’t have a car?” Lissy asked.

  “No,” Mom said. “You don’t need a car in Taipei. It’s like New York City. There are so many taxis.”

  And I realized it did seem a lot like New York City, at least what I could remember of New York City. I had been there only a couple of times with Mom and Dad. But all the bright yellow taxis and the tall buildings and the people walking here were just like it. Except I couldn’t read any of the signs. They were all in Chinese.

  “Look!” Ki-Ki said to me. “Watch the light!” She was pointing at the crossing light, a flashing sign that told people when it was safe to walk.

  But this light had a little green figure walking, like a cartoon. Above him was the countdown of how many seconds left there were to walk across the street. As the number got lower and lower, the figure started walking faster and faster until it was running! When the number got to zero, he turned red and stood still, and our taxi zoomed forward. We laughed. I had never seen a man actually move on a walk light before.

  When we got to the restaurant, Uncle Flower laughed.

  “Usually there is a long, long line,” he said. “But we are very early.”

  “What time is it?” Lissy asked.

  “Four o’clock,” Mom said. “Are you tired? It is four in the morning at home.”

  I was tired, but I was also hungry. As we waited for the hostess to seat us, I looked into the kitchen, where the chefs were making dumplings. It was like a fast and frantic dance, the chefs’ fingers flying as dumpling after dumpling were made. Six chefs chopped and mixed vegetables and meat. Also in the kitchen were a chef who made the dough, a chef who cut the dough into small pieces, another who rolled out dumpling skins, and a fourth who filled the skins with the meat mixture. And during all of that, more chefs lifted bamboo trays of cooking dumplings out of giant steamers, and hot misty clouds filled the air.

  “They make the dumplings so fast,” I said.

  “Eh?” Grandma asked. Grandma and Grandpa could speak English okay, but sometimes they had a hard time understanding it. Usually we had to repeat things to them.

  “The chefs,” I said, speaking slower, “they make the dumplings fast.”

  “Yes.” Grandma nodded. “In China, there is a famous dumpling chef. She can make one million dumplings in seven hours and twenty minutes.”

  “That’s fast!” Lissy said.

  “But is it faster than you can eat them?” Dad said. “We’ll have to see.”

  The hostess brought us to a table, and almost as soon as Grandpa was finished ordering, the waiter came out with the dumplings, which were like little pinched bags in a bamboo basket.

  Mom put one on a white spoon and handed it to me. I was glad I didn’t have to use chopsticks.

  “Careful when you eat these,” Auntie Jin said. “They’re special.”

  I’d had dumplings lots of times. How special could these be? But as I took a bite, I almost stopped in amazement.

  “There’s soup in these dumplings!” I said.

  All the adults at the table laughed.

  “I told you they were special!” Auntie Jin said. “They are called xiaolongbao. They have soup inside of them. They’re good, aren’t they?”

  I took another bite. The hot soup filled my mouth, and the mixture of soup and meat and dumpling skin seemed to melt into a warm, rich flavor. They were good. Very, very good. I began to realize why Uncle Flower said Taiwan had the best dumplings in the world.

  They were so good that I didn’t even notice that I had soup dribbling down my chin. I quickly wiped it away.

  “They say if you can eat these dumplings without making a mess, you are a ‘real Chinese’ person,” Uncle Flower said.

  “It’s because these dumplings are made so that one side has thinner skin than the other,” said Auntie Jin. “And you are supposed to break the dumpling on the thinner side to sip the soup out so you don’t make as much of a mess. But they say only a ‘real Chinese’ person can tell which side has the thinner skin.”

  A real Chinese person? I bet that meant not a Twinkie like me. But I carefully put another dumpling on my spoon and looked at it closely. To me, the delicate, shiny skin looked the same on all sides. Did this side look a bit paler? Maybe this was the thinner side. I took a bite… and more soup dribbled d
own my chin. Even the dumpling could tell I was just visiting.

  But I could still eat them. I could eat a lot of them and fast. Lissy and Ki-Ki could, too. Grandpa had to place two more orders for us.

  “We can eat the dumplings as fast as the chefs can make them,” I told Dad. “I bet I could eat a million dumplings!”

  “If you ate a million dumplings, you would be a dumpling yourself,” Dad said. “You’d be a dumpling stuffed with dumplings!”

  Then the waiter came with our dessert. In a round bamboo steamer were nine buns shaped and colored like delicate pink-and-white peaches. They had been so carefully made and decorated that they looked like they had just been picked from a tree. I reached for one.

  “These are special peach buns,” Auntie Jin told us. “Did you know the peach symbolizes longevity? We are going to have these at Grandma’s birthday party, too—to celebrate her long life. You eat these peach buns when you are celebrating something you want to have for a long time.”

  I took a bite. The peach bun was warm and soft with a creamy, sweet red-bean paste filling. It was good but kind of unexpected. I had thought it was going to taste cool and juicy—like a real peach.

  “Like all of us being together now, eating these peach buns,” Auntie Jin continued, “means that we will be together for a long time.”

  “And happy,” Mom said. “Eating these peach buns while we are happy means we will be happy for a long time.”

  “Does it mean we’ll be eating dumplings for a long time?” I asked. “Does it mean we can have dumplings tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? And then the next day, too?” Dad teased. “You know, if you have dumplings all the time, you’ll get tired of them.”

  “No, I won’t,” I insisted. “I could eat dumplings for a long time.”

  “Well, no matter what,” Dad said, “I do know that eating these peach buns after being stuffed with dumplings means we’ll be full for a long, long time.”

  Chapter 5

  “GET UP!” MOM SAID, SHAKING BOTH KI-KI AND ME. Ki-Ki made a whining noise and kept sleeping. “It’s the afternoon!”

  With my eyes half-closed, I followed Mom and Lissy out of the room, leaving Ki-Ki alone on the bed. Mom was right. It was the afternoon. We had slept all through the night and the morning, and now it was already the middle of the day. The bright sunlight flooded the hallway. I had to rub my eyes as I walked blindly. When I could see again, I saw the kitchen was full of people.

  “Finally awake!” Auntie Jin said, smiling at us.

  “Ahh, jet lag,” Grandma said, nodding knowingly.

  “Jet lag?” I asked. I still felt in a daze.

  “It’s when your body is all mixed up,” Mom said. “When it’s morning here, it’s night at home, so your body is confused and you are tired at the wrong time. That’s jet lag.”

  “Oh,” I said. My body wasn’t the only thing confused. Maybe my brain was jet-lagged, too.

  “Anyway, good thing you are finally awake!” Dad said. “We’re going out to lunch!”

  “We are?” I said. I tried to shake myself to feel more awake. I didn’t want to miss any good food. “Can we have dumplings again?”

  “You and dumplings,” Dad said, laughing. “Well, you can if you want to. We’re going for dim sum.”

  I looked at Lissy. Dad said dim sum like we should already know what that was. But I didn’t, and, even though she was pretending she did, I could tell by Lissy’s face that she didn’t, either. Neither one of us wanted to ask in front of everyone and look dumb. I wished Ki-Ki were there. This would have been a perfect time for her to ask questions, like she always did.

  But even without Ki-Ki, we would find out soon. Everyone seemed to be in a rush to go, speaking in Taiwanese so quickly that it sounded like a fast-forwarded movie. I was a little surprised when Uncle Flower, Aunt Bea, Grandma, Grandpa, and the cousins got up and left. They must have been really hungry.

  “They’re going to the restaurant first, to get us a table,” Dad told us. “You usually have to wait. This way, we don’t waste any time waiting for you to get ready.”

  “But you still have to hurry,” Mom told me. “Go get ready. And wake up Ki-Ki!”

  I ran to change out of my pajamas, and by the time I had brushed my teeth and hair, Ki-Ki was almost ready, too. Mom was brushing her hair and helping her put on her shoes at the same time.

  As we stepped outside, my tongue fell out of my mouth. It was really hot! The air was thick and sticky, and I felt like a dumpling being cooked in a steamer. I was glad when we got into a taxi. I didn’t want to walk, and the taxi was air-conditioned.

  Hundreds of signs in Chinese blurred by during the ride. Red, blue, and green Chinese characters seemed to decorate every surface of the buildings we passed. It was strange not to be able to read anything—it was as if everything were in a code that I felt like I should be able to figure out but couldn’t. That kind of made my head hurt. As we drove by another tall building, I saw a metal barrel with black smoke in front of it. Brilliant orange flames burst upward like a flickering flower.

  “Fire!” I said, pointing. “Something’s on fire!”

  Mom, Dad, and Auntie Jin looked and spoke in Taiwanese.

  “What?” I asked. “What?”

  “It’s probably for the Hungry Ghost Festival,” Auntie Jin said. “It’s almost Ghost Month.”

  “What’s Ghost Month?” Lissy asked.

  “Well, it is a little bit like Halloween in the United States,” Mom said. “It’s kind of a Chinese holiday where people honor spirits or ghosts.”

  “Do you trick-or-treat?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “No.” Dad laughed. “It’s not quite the same. In fact, it’s the ghosts who get all the treats during Ghost Month.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, you know how, in Chinese culture, it’s very important to honor one’s ancestors?” Dad said. “During the year, families often make offerings to their dead relatives—they make food or burn special ‘ghost money’ paper for them to have in the spirit world.”

  “Ghost money?” I said.

  “Not just money,” Auntie Jin added. “Now people make all sorts of things out of paper—clothes, shoes, computers, even cars. Anything you can think of, they can make it out of special paper for you to burn for the dead. That way, the ghosts can live in luxury, too!”

  “So what’s Ghost Month, then?” Lissy asked. I was kind of surprised she was interested. She never acted interested in anything, at least not since she became a “teenager.”

  “Ghost Month is the month that the gates between our world—the living world—and the ghost world are opened,” Dad said. “It’s the time when all the spirits can come visit their families.”

  “So what was the burning fire back there for?” I asked.

  “When the gates are open, all the spirits can come into the living world,” Dad said. “And there are always spirits who have no family to visit—spirits who have been forgotten or lost. We call them hungry ghosts. They wander, poor and starving, because they had no family to feed them or send them money during the rest of the year. So during Ghost Month, people make big plates of food and burn offerings just for them. That burning fire was people giving ghost money to the hungry ghosts.”

  “Why?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “Because people feel sorry for them,” Mom said. “And also a little afraid. A starving person is usually a desperate person, so a starving ghost is probably desperate, too. People don’t want starving ghosts to make any trouble, so that’s why they always make the offerings outside, away from their homes.”

  “And feed them so well!” Auntie Jin said, laughing. “At some temples, there are hundreds of plates of food, all different kinds.”

  “Why?” Ki-Ki asked again.

  “Maybe because people don’t know exactly what food the ghosts like,” Dad said. “Spirits can be picky eaters, just like people. Like Great-Uncle Zhuzhan.”

  HONORING GREAT
-UNCLE ZHUZHAN

  The Lunar New Year after Great-Uncle Zhuzhan died, we had a grand feast. Our family was doing well: My oldest brother had gotten a promotion at the school he taught at and one of my sisters had gotten married. So for that Lunar New Year, we were able to have a celebration. My mother, sisters, and aunts cooked all day, steaming and frying. I could smell the good food with every breath I took, and I couldn’t wait to eat.

  In my family, before we ate, we had to honor our ancestors who’d passed away. Since Great-Uncle Zhuzhan had just died, his photo was on the family altar. So in front of his picture, we put the plates of fried dumplings, rice noodles cooked with pork and bean sprouts, a winter melon soup, and even a whole chicken with its head and feet on for extra luck.

  Each member of the family lit a stick of incense and bowed three times to the altar, with Great-Uncle Zhuzhan watching us the whole time. Then, when the incense was about one-third burned, Big Brother tossed two coins. We all leaned in to see how they landed. If either coin landed heads up, then that meant our ancestors were laughing and not finished eating yet. It also meant Big Brother would have to keep tossing the coins. Only when both coins landed tails up could we eat.

  But on this day, the coins refused to land tails up. Over and over again, the coins landed—sometimes one heads up, sometimes both, but never two tails. The food was getting cold, and I was getting hungrier and hungrier! I felt as if the ancestors were laughing at us!

  Everyone else in the family was getting hungry, too. And we were all puzzled. Why weren’t the ancestors eating?

  Then my aunt made a noise like a firecracker. “It’s Zhuzhan!” she said. “He always likes things so salty!”

  And she grabbed the rice noodles and rushed back into the kitchen. I watched as she threw the noodles back into her bowl-like frying pan, ladled in more soy sauce, and tossed the mixture over and over again on the stove. Then she dumped it back onto the platter and pushed it toward me to place on the altar. “Now try,” she said.