by Ken Hom
Sure enough, one night it was time for Jeremiah to meet the rich client. He pulled up outside Susie’s home, honking the horn, and out she came, beautifully dressed for the evening and carrying a jeroboam of champagne. That’s the equivalent of four bottles of champagne in one bottle. When Susie wanted to bring a bottle, she really brought a bottle.
They set off for the rich client’s home, and then they started to argue. Well, Jeremiah could be temperamental at times. Maybe he was feeling nervous about the meeting with the rich client, but the point is, he threw a tantrum.
Susie was saying, ‘Grow up … Get a grip.’
Suddenly, Jeremiah put his foot on the brake and said, ‘Get outta the car … Get outta my car.’
Susie: ‘I’m not getting outta your car. Just calm down.’
Well, the drama developed. Jeremiah drove to the police station in Berkeley. And that’s where he got outta the car. He went into the police station, while Susie stayed in her seat. A few minutes later, Jeremiah re-emerged with a police officer at his side. Susie wound down the window. The police officer blinked in disbelief. Was he seeing things or was that woman cradling the world’s largest bottle of wine?
Police officer: ‘Ma’am, Mr Tower would like you to get outta the car.’
Susie: ‘That’s fine, officer. Now?’
‘No, ma’am. Mr Tower will drive you home.’
Susie, in unparalleled sarcasm: ‘Oh! How kind!’
At that point, Jeremiah climbed back into the driver’s seat, started up, and drove back to Susie’s home, with his passenger almost invisible behind the jeroboam. A voice behind the bottle was saying to him, ‘This is really baby-ish.’ He turned up the radio to drown out the voice. At the destination, Susie hurriedly took herself and her champagne out of the car, and Jeremiah sped away. That was the last time ever that Jeremiah and Susie either saw or spoke to one another, which was a real shame.
The next morning I phoned Susie. She had a hangover. Jeremiah may have wanted to drown out her voice, but she was intent on drowning her sorrows. She had put a sizeable dent in the jeroboam’s contents. She came over for strong coffee, and I said, ‘Please don’t worry, Susie. We’ll get these tours going to Hong Kong.’
‘Oh,’ she sighed. ‘After last night, I don’t know if I can do anything with a chef.’
I told her, ‘Susie, with me – what you see, is what you get.’ She smiled sweetly, and I had the feeling we were in business. It would be Susie, the travel expert, and me, the cook and teacher. Oh, and I hired Erika, Susie’s teenage daughter. She could teach us both how to use a computer.
14
The Boy Who Was Ip Man
THE MOVIE HOUSE was called Sing Sing and it was at the very end of Chinatown. It had concrete floors and cheap, wooden benches that were extremely uncomfortable.
At that time in the 1950s, most of the films were black-and-white and in Cantonese, as they had been shipped over from Hong Kong. Invariably they were tear-jerkers. Sad stories about people losing their loved ones. Death was a prominent theme. Some films told stories of people losing their children when they were young … and then being reunited with them when they were older. Passionate reunions lit up the big screen, and lit up the faces within the audience.
Sure, the acting was hammed up. However, for those of us who were Chinese and living in Chicago – the entire audience – these productions were fantastic, and made the benches bearable.
On Sundays, and in return for $3, you would get to see four or five features, which would include Cantonese opera. Filmed operas are a strong part of Chinese entertainment and my mother was a devotee. Her favourite movie-opera star was Yam Kim-Fai, a woman who often played the role of a man. You’ve probably never heard of Yam but she made 307 movies and was worshipped throughout China.
I was less keen on the opera, which is an acquired taste. I preferred action films and, in particular, Wong Fei-hung. He was a renowned kung fu artist and played the character of Ip Man. He was also a mentor to Bruce Lee, the original kung fu movie star of the Western world. I would have loved to have learnt martial arts, but instead made do with the adventures on celluloid. People didn’t have time to teach me the lightning moves of kung fu.
As a child I sat transfixed and on the edge of my uncomfortable seat as the lithe and nimble Ip Man leapt dangerously from roof to roof. The movie house was packed out, and there was food, though not the sweet ice creams, hot dogs or popcorn you might find on sale in your local cinema. There were Chinese sour-and-salty treats, such as dried sour plums, or little fish which had been fermented and dried. The cinema smelled old, musty and damp, and there was the whiff of the fermented snacks – the floor was littered with discarded food wrappers, which probably helped to keep the fermented smell in the room.
The large grocery store was the hub of Chinatown’s community, but on Sundays the cinema became a secondary hub. People treated it as a place to meet and chat. At times it was difficult to maintain the crucial suspension of disbelief that is required when watching a movie. Just as Ip Man was launching himself onto another roof, the dramatic tension of the moment was destroyed by a couple of elderly women chitter-chattering about the price of water chestnuts.
There are always eating scenes in Chinese films, except for the operas. Whether it’s a contemporary or ancient setting, the characters sit around a table, munching away. This reinforced what I was learning from my mother and uncles – that eating is fundamental to Chinese culture and social behaviour; that the Chinese are eating frequently and thinking of food non-stop.
After the cinema, I was in my own world of make-believe, pretending I was one of the kung fu guys. During winter, when the men came round to sweep up the snow, there were piles of the stuff on the pavements. These were my pretend mountains. I would leap from one mountain to another, kicking and chopping; deep in the fantasy that I was Ip Man.
The cinema was bad for me. It was bad because it prevented me from integrating. It stopped me feeling as if I was American. I never felt American and, today, I feel more British, which is ironic. When I go to Britain, I feel really at home, like it’s the place where I belong. But the cinema was also good for me. It was a step back into a world no longer known to the audience. Like an island in the sea of America, Chinatown was disconnected from its origins. A visit to the cinema reconnected us instantly with our history. Others in the audience had known China. For me, it strangely formed a past that was intangible, even though my mother constantly told me that I was Chinese.
Going to the cinema made me … It made me feel real. And it made China feel real.
I would hear my relatives talk about parts of Hong Kong, such as Nathan Road – also known as the Golden Mile – or the district of Wan Chai. But what they said was meaningless as I had never set foot in Hong Kong. The meaning came once I saw these places on screen. From that hard bench in Sing Sing, my young mind was full of dreams, and my imagination was bursting with curiosity. I never imagined, however, that one day I would be there, in the places that I had first seen in that movie house. I never imagined such a thing but, still, I hoped for it.
15
Embraced by Hong Kong
I WAS AWOKEN BY warm light on my face. The light was comforting and, coming to my senses, I remembered the meal and a couple of glasses of champagne and a glass of claret. I must have nodded off. Darkness had given way to dawn, and the sunlight was powerful enough to bring me round. A stewardess offered me tea and as she poured she said, ‘Stay awake for the landing. That’s when it gets exciting.’
Kai Tak Airport was in Kowloon, and it served Hong Kong. In case you have never heard of it, let me explain. It was one of the most dangerous airports in the world. Pilots preparing to land first had to negotiate a particularly deep descent to reach the runway, taking the plane in between skyscrapers. They said you could look out of the window and see people brushing their teeth.
The overcrowded airport was located beside the sea – when coming in to land, a number of
planes had over-run the runway and crashed into the water. The airport was opened in the 1920s but by 1998 the authorities conceded it was far too dangerous to keep open. They shut it down. The stewardess was right: it was exciting. Harrowing is probably a more appropriate description. I didn’t see teeth brushers through windows, but the rooftops were scarily close and no sign of Ip Man. Word had it that, over the years, quite a few TV aerials were snipped away by the wings, wheels or fuselages of aircraft.
From that hard bench in the Sing Sing movie house in Chicago’s Chinatown, I had hoped of visiting China, of being there; walking the bustling streets and eating the sort of food I had seen in the black-and-white movies. In 1980, I went. This was the trip, and I landed safely.
Usually, when you arrive for the first time in a foreign country, you feel like a foreigner. In France and Italy, I had spoken neither French nor Italian and had the sense of being a stranger. Hong Kong was entirely different, and quite magical. Everybody looked like me. I could understand what they were saying, of course, as most of them spoke Cantonese.
I’m home, I thought. I bought Cantonese pop music that I hadn’t heard in the States, and Cantonese movies on video (still when I go to Hong Kong I buy DVDs so that I can catch up on the Cantonese cinema). It was peculiar to switch on the TV and hear people delivering the news in Cantonese. I remember flicking onto a variety show – again, people speaking in Chinese but, interestingly, I was struck by how confident they were. These were Chinese people, but they were poised and self-assured – attributes that were not always common in the Chinese-Americans. Hong Kong was a British colony, but the Chinese were running the show. I felt proud. I mean, there were times when I was literally moved to tears just to be there.
Everything I saw I liked. It was as if somebody had opened a door to a part of my life that had been hidden.
My first meal came after checking in to the Peninsula. I was hungry and ordered room service: a Chinese dish which shocked me because it was so bad; at that time, the Peninsula didn’t have a Chinese restaurant and served Western food. Later, I went for a stroll and passed a funky little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Steam was coming out of the door. People were gathering for whatever was being served. I double backed to take a look. Behind the counter, an elderly man was ladling up bowls of Wonton noodle soup. I joined the queue. It was simple, wonderful and delicious. So much so, it makes me want to cook Chinese food for lunch.
* * *
I am going to make Chinese sausage with stir-fried eggs, which takes about 5 minutes. A friend brought the sausages, all the way from Hong Kong to my flat in Paris.
If you were eating them for the first time, you might expect these sausages to be spicy. In that case you would be surprised, as they are quite sweet and richly aromatic. They are deep burgundy in colour, with white flecks of fat. They are made from pork meat, pork liver or duck liver, and are a little longer than your middle finger. Chinese sausages look a bit like thin, dry salami or British chipolatas. First, they are steamed before being used in other dishes.
Into a hot wok goes a splash of groundnut oil and I let it heat to smoking point. I toss in three sausages – they’ve been steamed and sliced into bite-sized pieces. I stir and fry for a couple of minutes. Next, I add six beaten eggs – stir-frying for 2 or 3 minutes, until the eggs begin to set. Six spring onions – sliced – join the party in the wok. Another minute of stir-frying. It’s done! Ready to feed two people.
I cannot eat this dish without thinking of my mother, who often made it, adding seasonal greens, like chives or garlic shoots in the spring.
* * *
AS I wandered Hong Kong’s streets, which were packed with stalls and markets, I was drawn in by the sights and sounds of people simply loving their food: the clatter of spoon against wok or the chop of cleaver on wood; the comforting waft of soups and stir-fries; the Cantonese shouts of stallholders pitching their wares. The climate was semi-tropical, so the streets were hot and humid, which added to the heady atmosphere.
The Cantonese like their food to be fresh, which means much of the produce is alive: water-filled tanks of fresh fish and shellfish, cages of clucking poultry, and even tanks of bouncing frogs. For the first time I saw fresh bamboo shoots. Until then, I had only known them in tins. There were spices and pastes which had not made – could not have made – their way past border control and into the Chinatowns of America.
This was street food that I had never come across. Early on Sunday mornings, my mother and my aunt used to go to the Jewish quarter, where they would buy a live chicken and bring it home to be despatched. The sound of the chicken clucking was my wake-up call. However, there were no market stalls in Chinatown Chicago, perhaps for two reasons: first, it would have been too unhygienic to be legal; second, it was too bloody cold.
The markets of Hong Kong did not off er cats and dogs. The sale of such meat was banned by the British authorities. I have never eaten these animals, which are taboo in the Western world, although my cousin in China has a restaurant that specialises in dishes of cat. The Chinese believe that we can obtain the qualities of an animal by eating it. For the Chinese, dragons and tigers are auspicious. They symbolise great strength and, by eating them, their strength is passed on to the consumer. Of course, dragons and tigers are hard to come by. Snakes and cats are the next best thing. Similarly, for those seeking virility, tiger penis is recommended as the solution. Most stallholders are all out of tiger penis, but deer penis is considered a good substitute.
I remember a subsequent visit to Hong Kong with Ron Batori. We went to a restaurant; the dining room was like a large, grand ballroom. We were waiting to be seated, and standing next to an American couple at their table. They were having trouble with the menu as there was no egg foo yung or chop suey, but plenty of alligator and other strange (to them) dishes. The man put his menu down on the table, looked up to his wife and said, ‘Darling, I think I might have the double boiled deer penis. It looks like the safest bet.’
I had lamb in a Chinese restaurant, which was a new experience for me: lamb has a powerful, pungent smell which is not pleasant to many Chinese and is rarely on the menu. I found only one butcher’s store which sold it. I also had real Sichuan food. At Uncle Paul’s restaurant in Chicago we did one or two Sichuan dishes, but this was the real thing.
I discovered a lot of the regional cooking of China. This included Shanghai cuisine, and ingredients such as hairy crab, of which I had heard but never seen. It is a variety of the mitten crab – so called because of its furry legs. There were rice birds, which are tiny little birds that appear during the rice harvest. These days it is forbidden to eat them, but then they were captured and roasted. I ate roast goose – quite popular in Britain, but I’d never come across it in the Chinatowns of America.
It was like stepping into an Ali Baba cave of food treasures (‘open sesame oil’), and I was fascinated by all the cookery shops, too. They sold utensils I had never seen before and I returned from that first trip with two suitcases that were filled only with cookware and ingredients that were unavailable in the States.
IT helped enormously that I spoke Cantonese, though I spoke it in an archaic way because I had been locked away in Chicago’s Chinatown. In Hong Kong, people would ask me, ‘How long have you been away? When did you emigrate?’
‘I was born in America,’ I’d respond, and they were astonished that someone who was born in America could speak Cantonese, and in a strange, old way.
The tours became a regular fixture, organised by Susie. We acquired connoisseurs along the way. Willie Mark, the esteemed restaurant critic in Hong Kong, came on board, introducing me to the finest chefs in the province and suggesting restaurants that had to be visited. I had expected to discover a Hong Kong that felt repressed because it was under British rule. Quite the contrary. The Chinese got on with their lives and went about their business as if the Brits weren’t there. Hong Kong was a fantastic discovery for me, and our trips were an instant success.
Then there was the programme for my students. I went ahead of them, and they would arrive on a Saturday to be greeted by yours truly. On the first night there was a dinner, and the following morning I’d take them to the New Territories, for a taste of rural China at a time when most of the country was closed and therefore inaccessible to tourists. The rice fields and fishing villages of the New Territories were such a contrast to the urban sophistication of Hong Kong. It was timeless China.
We would visit a temple and then go to a fishing village near the border. Next, we would head to a market that sold live fish. This was in a street lined with inexpensive restaurants – the fish is bought live and taken to the restaurant, where it is then cooked. Such moments were extraordinary and special for my students, who had never seen anything like this. Lunch was followed by a trip to a farm which was experimenting with crops; what would grow best in the climate, and how best to improve the crops.
The day would end with dinner in the New Territories, and at a restaurant that specialised in a dish of pigeon. The pigeon is partly braised in a sauce, then dried for five hours in front of a fan, and then it is fried to look like crispy Peking duck. The sauce in which the pigeon is braised is a ‘master stock’, which has been cooking for about eighty years and is regularly topped up. There were, say, fifteen of us, each receiving a pigeon. So fifteen pigeons were carried out on a tray and the custom is to eat the birds with your hands, a tradition that met with no resistance from my crowd. The dish is sensational and the students would return to the hotel shattered but with an understanding of my vision of Hong Kong.