by You Jin
Later, this became a source of trouble for me. Because I was so strict with this rule, my kids took it upon themselves to find ways around it. James often took up their cause, saying, “Let them try to overcome it. If they eat snow cones once in a while, who knows, maybe that will build up their resistance.”
But I always put my foot down. “Absolutely not.”
Once, after we had finished eating, James took the three children for a walk. They were out for a long time before finally coming home. As soon as they got home, James lay casually on the sofa and flipped through the newspaper. The children giggled and exchanged furtive glances, looking quite pleased with themselves. I asked, “What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” they said, and then shot out of the room. Because I was busy with other things, I did not give it a second thought.
One day, not long after they got home from another walk, chubby Fung Teck’s face suddenly turned very pale. He squatted and started crying. I saw that he was wheezing and realised he was having an asthma attack. I rushed to the medical kit and got the inhaler.
Forever honest, Fung Yee blurted out, “You see! I warned you not to eat so much just now!”
“Eat what?” I asked, staring suspiciously. Then I raised my voice and said, “What did you eat while you were out?”
“We…ate…” Fung Yee stuttered, but did not dare go on.
James hurried over and took responsibility. “I gave them snow cones.”
“What?!”
Fung Teck’s asthma took several days to subside. From that day on, I did not trust them any more. When James took them out, I would follow behind, reminding three or four times, “You must not eat snow cones. Don’t forget!”
As soon as they got home, I would take out the torchlight and make them line up and open their mouths for me to check their tongues. The syrup would normally turn their tongues bright colours, but even though I inspected them many times, their tongues always passed muster.
It was only after they became adults that they told me the whole story: “When Baba took us out, he got us snow cones and then made us drink mineral water afterward. Even though he never told us so, we knew that it was to wash away the colour from our tongues. Sometimes, just to be safe, we would use a tissue to wipe our tongues even after we drank the water. Every time you checked our mouths after we came back, our hearts were pounding. It was hilarious!”
I asked, “How far would you have carried it, if I had asked directly?”
Laughing, they replied, “Baba said that if you asked, we had to tell the truth. But you never asked!”
I had gone to great trouble, but never taken the simplest, most direct step!
Thinking back on it now, many years later, I think James actually did the right thing. If he had taken my side back then, strictly forbidding the children from eating snow cones, they would have missed out on that childhood experience. Plus, there was no real evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between the snow cones and the asthma attacks. In fact, of the dozen or so times James took it upon himself to give the children snow cones, there was only one asthma attack. To the children’s way of thinking, even if an asthma attack was triggered by the snow cones, it had only happened once in over ten times; it was worth it, given those odds.
The Joy of Cooking
Cooking is my favourite hobby, but like many traditional mothers, I made the mistake of thinking of the kitchen as a woman’s domain, and kept my two sons away from the whole cooking process. This created great problems when they each went overseas to study at the age of seventeen. In 1994, I wrote the following article about an interesting incident that happened before Fung Yee went overseas:
My seventeen-year-old stared at the huge chunk of beef on the chopping block, and asked in a puzzled tone, “Mama, how do you cut this?”
Fung Yee will leave home next month, flying to the US for his studies. He is like the majority of children who grow up in Singapore, having all his needs easily met at home without having to lift a finger himself, living like a prince. Now that he has been accepted to the University of Tennessee to further his academic career, he is speed-learning to cook.
In order to cultivate a sense of independence in him, I’ve rented a small apartment off campus for him, which means he’ll need to prepare his meals himself. When he first heard about this arrangement, his head swelled like a balloon—only to quickly deflate at the thought of cooking.
I comforted him: “Don’t worry. I’ll teach a crash course just for you.”
In the kitchen, I realised that this academically successful boy was frustratingly clumsy when it came to handling even a ladle. When I cook, I have various condiments—sugar, wine, oil, salt, soya sauce, vinegar—all standing by to add flavour, and I know how much of each to use in order to achieve the right blend. But when I showed him what to do, he just could not get it. “Mama, exactly how much do I add? Please write it down.” He brought over the scales, and put the beef on it, saying, “When you cook this beef, weighing 536 grammes, how much oil should I use? And how much wine? And ginger sauce?”
These sorts of questions stressed me out. I would measure everything, and he’d take meticulous notes. In this way, I taught him all the tricks of cooking.
He worked hard, observing each step for every dish and making careful notes. After he had written everything down, I said, “Okay, now show me what you’ve picked up. There are chicken, duck and fish in the refrigerator. You can cook that for our dinner.”
As he busied himself about the kitchen, I made an exit, letting him put what he had learned into practice. Three hours later, he announced loudly to everyone that he was done, then put the dishes on the table: beef in oyster sauce, an onion omelette, fried chicken, and steamed cabbage with dried shrimp.
I picked up the beef. It was tough as leather, having been cut along the grain.
“You kept telling me not to cut along the grain,” he said, “but then the words ‘cut along the grain’ got stuck in my head, so when I started slicing it, that’s what I did.”
I took a thick slice of the “rubber beef ” and put it in my mouth. After trying my best to chew it, I finally said, “Why did you cut it so thick?”
“The knife was blunt.”
“Then why didn’t you sharpen it?”
“You didn’t teach me that!”
The fluffy omelette looked better and much more appetising. But even this simple dish had its problems: the onions inside were overcooked and black, which gave the entire dish a burnt flavour. His explanation for this was: “I was doing something else and didn’t watch the fire.”
The fried chicken was even worse; it was not even cooked through. As soon as I cut into it, red blood oozed out, making me lose my appetite on the spot. My son’s eyes widened in shock. “I cooked it forever, but it’s still raw!”
It looked like the only edible item was the plate of steamed cabbage with dried prawns, but even that was no good. It was so salty that I could not swallow it. He said, “I didn’t weigh the cabbage, so my measurements were all off.”
With these failures, my son learned a valuable lesson. Cooking looks easy, but there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. The days following this were filled with busy preparations for his move overseas, so he did not have another chance to try his hand at cooking.
Once he was overseas for three weeks, we received his first letter. It read: “I have settled into the apartment. I have a refrigerator, television and microwave. Everything is convenient. The apartment is close to school, just a ten-minute walk away. The supermarket is a little farther; even if I walk quickly, it still takes about half an hour. Last week I picked up all the daily necessities. The bag of rice was heavy! Carrying it gave me a backache. It’s quiet as a graveyard here. When I finish class in the afternoon, there’s nowhere to go. One funny thing has happened though. Cooking has become my favourite pastime! I can’t find all my notes on cooking and forgot the few dishes I tried so hard to learn while I was in S
ingapore, but a few days ago, based on memory, I cooked spaghetti with meat sauce. To tell the truth, I’ve never eaten anything so horrible in my life! But I didn’t want to waste food, so I forced myself to eat it. I also made too much, but I felt bad about throwing it away, so I put the leftovers in the refrigerator and have been eating it for three days! Yesterday I bought a cookbook. After I read it, I found the techniques in the book much too complex, so I didn’t learn anything from it. Mama, if you have time, could you write down some simple recipes for me? I can’t stand my own concoctions any more!”
Learning to cook for himself is going to cause him a good deal of stress. But I know that these upcoming four years spent cooking in a kitchen overseas will help make him a better man.
This article was first published in 1995 in the Taiwanese journal Xin Sheng Bao, then later reprinted in the book Nan Gua Qing, or For the Love of Pumpkin. I bring this story up now to encourage young mothers to learn from my experience, and not to make the same mistake.
When you give a child the skills he needs for the kitchen, you pass on a body of knowledge that will last his whole life. I was raised in a home that very much appreciated the culinary arts. Both my parents loved to eat and loved to cook, and they were both good eaters and good cooks. But I only learned to be a great eater when I was young, neglecting to pick up my parents’ cooking skills. By the time I got married, I did not even know how much water to put into a pot of rice to cook. Looking back now, I find it laughable.
But aside from that, I find it regrettable that many of our family recipes passed down through generations are now lost. When I was young and my relatives tried to teach me, I always thought, I’ll learn when I have some free time. So I dragged my feet, waiting for the right time, putting it off until the beloved older generation disappeared like a dream. Only then did it sink in that what I should have learned—and desperately wanted to learn—was something I would never pick up. I had waited until it was too late.
I did not want my beloved daughter to follow my footsteps, so after Ke Jun was born, I always kept her at the hearth. Even before she could walk, I put her in a baby chair in the kitchen. While I was busy chopping and cooking vegetables, cutting and braising meat, or frying fish and fowl, she sat to one side, babbling and squirming in her chair. The boiling rice bubbled along with her, and the sizzling meat added its voice as well. When the salmon started popping in the oil, it was like a whole symphony in my kitchen. I moved about, testing each dish, glancing at my daughter with a bright smile. She would watch me and laugh. The warmth we shared went straight to my heart, and I knew what happiness was.
One day when she was four, the counter was piled high with dumpling skins. I was adding water chestnut and onion to the mixture of prawn and minced pork, then seasoning it with sugar, salt, oyster sauce, pepper and other condiments to bring out just the right balance of flavours. Then I enthusiastically started the wrapping process. I put the ingredients into the dumpling skin and wrapped them into half circles, then placed them one by one in the oil to fry. The dumplings groaned as they tossed and turned in the oil, gradually turning a lovely golden brown, looking like gold ingots.
Ke Jun sat in her high chair, shaking her chubby little legs. When I took a dumpling from the oil with a long pair of chopsticks, she cried happily, “Mama! A golden rat!”
I laughed. What looked like gold ingots to me became golden rats in her eyes.
When I fried dumplings, I did one or two hundred at a time. After they were cooked, I put them neatly on round plates, then sent Fung Yee and Fung Teck out as delivery service for our neighbours—the Chens across the street, the Lais next door, and the Wangs across from them.
To me, sharing good food with others is the happiest thing in life, and a way for my neighbours and I to compare notes on our culinary skills. My “modest spur” induced gifts in return of the Chens’ red fermented rice paste chicken, the Lais’ Hakka yong tau fu, and the Wangs’ glutinous rice. In both giving and receiving food, we broke down barriers and built a rapport among ourselves, and my children got to taste the joys of having a close relationship with them.
One funny incident that Ke Jun still likes to talk about was when we made curry puffs. We first cooked the pastry, then cut it into various shapes. After that, we named each curry puff, calling the long, round one Bolster Puff, or the long, square one Book Puff, or the triangular one Pyramid Puff. The spherical one was Earth Puff, and the last, oddly-shaped piece was Demon Puff. In our own “private” curry puffs, we added a little more chicken, then tried to “brand” them, so that we could spot them easily. Sometimes we would playfully replace the filling with strawberry or apricot jam, then invite Fung Yee and Fung Teck to try them. The comical expressions on their faces when the “curry puffs” did not taste like what they expected brought us much laughter. Since I always decorated our lives with such harmless jokes, the kids have a very good sense of humour.
When my daughter started primary school, I signed up for a cooking class in the evening, and was allowed to bring her with me. It was a great feeling for the two of us to put our hands together and learn new things. After class, we were allowed to bring the result of our experiment home with us. As everyone else rushed out, we would sit in one corner, savouring the food we had just prepared, exchanging ideas on how we might do better next time.
This cooking class taught us the meaning of delicacy. For instance, the dish called Beautiful World requires a lot of work to prepare—cutting carrots and beans into fine strips as thin as thread, steaming them, then wrapping them in thinly sliced round steaks. Using cotton thread, a piece of fatty bacon is secured over the layer of steak. This is then fried in oil over low heat. When it is done and plated, it looks as beautiful as a gem.
A great deal of complex work goes into cooking a dish called Rainbow Chicken Kebabs. One first debones the chicken thighs and cuts them into pieces about the size of your thumb, then adds chunks of pineapple, tomato and green peppers, alternating them with the chicken meat on the skewers. The whole skewer is fried in oil, then baked. The finished dish is a like a rainbow on the plate.
After picking up several garish dishes in our cooking class, we went home and tried them on our family, then stored the recipes away. The world of cooking is as vast as the sky or the sea. I am always learning, picking up new ideas and techniques, and improving my skills. I love to create new dishes; it is one of my greatest joys.
Ke Jun, who grew up among the fires of the kitchen, is like me. She has a real appreciation for good flavours. She loves to eat, and she loves to cook. With clever hands and good sense, she lends beauty to delicacies. In her nimble hands, an ordinary dish will display the beauty of a painting. Indeed, the student has surpassed her master.
CHAPTER 9
Language is Life
Putting Learning to Use
WHEN KE JUN was three, I took her to play at a friend’s house in the Katong area. Her living room was magnificently decorated, with an exquisitely woven Persian carpet underneath her leather sofa. My friend and I sat on the sofa chatting, while her maid sat with Ke Jun on the carpet, playing with their adorable poodle and letting out peals of childish laughter, like dewdrops on lotus leaves.
Lost in her joy, it was too late when she realised something was amiss. Struggling to her feet, a waterfall gushed out from under her short skirt, and the expensive Persian carpet was suddenly soaked, the sour odour of urine assailing our noses. I felt ashamed and embarrassed, especially since my daughter had been toilet-trained since she was two. Without a word, I shot up from the sofa, flew to my daughter’s side, hand high in the air to come in for a slap, but Ke Jun lifted her face to me, and in a teary voice recited: “Men are not saints, who can be faultless? A fault confessed is half redressed.”
My hand froze in the air, then lowered; I had taught her that maxim shortly before. In order to strengthen the learning impact, I explained to her that if she committed a mistake, she should recite that maxim and she would avoid punishme
nt. I did not expect her to put her learning to use at such a crucial moment to extricate herself from danger. I suggested to my friend that I would send the carpet for dry cleaning, but she insisted it was not necessary. Then she jokingly added, “If such a small child can use such profound language to express feelings when she makes a mistakes, even her huge sins will be forgiven when she uses those same methods.” On the one hand, I was terribly embarrassed and sorry for my daughter’s mistake, but I also could not help but be secretly pleased by her active mind and lively use of language.
Idioms are the distilled essence of Chinese language, where every phrase is a gem, concise and comprehensive. If we can pass down well-seasoned language to our younger generation, it is like giving them a sharp language sword that will benefit them forever. Every day, I made use of the commute to my children’s school to intentionally tell them the traditional stories behind Chinese idioms, stories filled with historical and cultural knowledge:
There was once a scholar named Sun Shan who wanted to go to the provincial capital to seek his fame. Before his departure, an elderly man paid him a visit, begging him to bring his son along so that they could take the imperial examination together. Sun Shan agreed heartily. The two arrived at the provincial capital and took the examination. After a period of waiting, Sun Shan nervously arrived to receive his results. There was already a huge crowd gathered. After considerable effort, he got to the front of the crowd, but failed to find his name among those who had passed, even though he looked the board over several times. His heart sank. Clinging on to the last hope, he looked one final time, and to his surprise found his name on the very last row. His sorrow turned to joy. However, he could not find the name of his friend anywhere on the board, meaning he definitely failed the examination. Sun Shan returned to the inn and conveyed the results to the fellow villager. His friend was saddened by the news of his failure, and told Sun Shan he would like to stay a few more days in the provincial capital to drive away his cares. Sun Shan, on the other hand, was eager to go home, and did so the next day. When he got home, the villagers heard about his success and came to offer him their congratulations. The elderly father of Sun Shan’s friend said he did not come back, and asked Sun Shan about it. Sun Shan was a humorous guy, and so he did not answer the elderly man directly, but used a funny poem he came up with to answer: The names cut off at Sun Shan, your son falls behind Sun Shan. In other words, he failed.