The Last Chinese Chef

6

Yi Yin was the greatest of all Chinese chefs. Three and a half thousandsonifies years later, his writings are still read and discussed. He personifies the sanctity and power of cuisine through China’s history. He was born a slave. Yet he could cook so brilliantly that the Emperor appointed him Prime Minister. A man who could fine-tune the mysteries of the bronze tripods, the Emperor knew, could run the state and manage its alliances. This dynasty lasted six hundred and forty-four years.

– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef

When he heard Sam’s voice on the phone saying he was on his way to Hangzhou, Xie Er had himself carried down to the kitchen to wait. He told his son and daughters he would not move until Nephew arrived.

The Xie family lived in a two-story, four-bedroom, white-tiled house up in the hills beyond the botanical garden. It was quiet there, everything a soft shade of green, one of the last places on a two-lane road that petered out under stands of bamboo. The fronds were dry now, in the breezy sun of late September, and rustled all around the house. The bamboo had never flowered in Xie Er’s lifetime. This was not surprising. Bamboo did its spreading underground and sometimes did not flower for a century or more. Still, he had lived a long time. He had thought he might see it. He listened to the soft, clicking fronds as he lay on the rattan recliner where they’d settled him to wait for Nephew.

He would not see it bloom. He knew what was coming even though they did not tell him. Huh, old Dr. Shen, he was a fool if he thought Xie could not grasp his euphemisms and decode his grave glances to Wang Ling. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. The pain he had felt in his limbs for so long was gone, replaced by numbness. His body was failing, spiraling away from him, his hands quivering when he could raise them at all. Yet he was clear. Steel cables sang in his mind. He remembered everything about his life. And while he could feel the next world, feel its sounds and urges and movements beyond the veil, at the same time he knew he had never been sharper or more astute about this one. He saw everyone and everything, not the surface but what was true inside. Most of what he saw made him content.

He watched the square of window with its pattern of bamboo and blue sky, listening for the calls of water birds and the faraway promise of Nephew’s car roaring up the road. The boy was more like Xie’s child than any of his own – except for Songling, who smelled food and tasted it and understood it in all its multiplying facets the way he did, and Nephew did. She would have been his equal had she been a man. But it was not her fate to be a man. She became a restaurant manager. It was a good life for her. Women could not become chefs. There had been a time, in the Song Dynasty more than a thousand years ago, when there was a trend of female chefs in the great houses of Hangzhou, but it was a brief movement, one that died with the dynasty. There were women who were great home cooks and teachers, but not true chefs. They lacked the upper-body strength. They might hold up half the sky, as the saying went, but they couldn’t flip the heavy woks in a restaurant kitchen. No, a female person like his adored Songling had too steep a hill to climb to become a chef, but she could be a laoban, a boss, a restaurant manager, which was far better: less work, more money. It was the right choice for her. Everything now was money: houses, cars, phones, clothes, jewels, vacations. Money was life.

Now the world had changed and changed again. His father had died in prison. Money and gourmet food and discriminating consumption – that was evil in the 1950s and ’60s. To have ever participated in it became a crime. His old father confessed to everything they asked of him, made all his self-criticisms, groveled, yet they let him bleed to death in his cell from his stomach ulcer anyway, shitting blood, vomiting it, crying out for a doctor. Fornicators, he thought.

But he, Xie Er, had survived, and with Wang Ling had gone on to produce a son and three daughters.

He also managed to bring back the restaurant after decades of closure, an homage to his father, who surely could not have imagined such a thing during those last days in his cell. When Xie Er reopened in 1993 under the original name, Xie Jia Cai, Hangzhou people flocked back to it as if it had been closed for only a few weeks – old people, who remembered the original, and young people, who had heard the stories. The timing was perfect. Privatization was just beginning. The economy was picking up speed. People needed venues in which they could entertain each other, sit, converse, negotiate, extract information, and ask for help. This was how things got done in the Chinese world. It had always been so. A favor would be bestowed, in the form of a great meal, and a favor asked in return. Then there was the social side of life: families and groups of friends needed a place to gather, lovers a place to meet. All of them came back.

Xie Er ran the place for twelve years and then sold it, his debt to his father repaid, the family secure, his bank accounts safe in Hong Kong and Vancouver. He disliked banks and he disliked foreign countries. He had lived long, however, and had seen China change too many times to take chances.

Outside his window he noticed a change in the bamboo fronds – a deepening of color, a brittle scratch to their movements. He had never seen the plants look this way before. But now everything looked different. The world looked different. He was dying. His boat was pulling away from the shore.

Xie let his eyes wander to his worn copy of The Last Chinese Chef on its shelf above his head. How much pleasure the book had given him. How right and correct for Nephew and his father to put it in English. Perhaps now, he thought, the world would finally grasp the greatness of his nation’s cuisine, not to mention its long history. People sometimes said the cuisine’s long history was the very thing that made it special, but it was not the longevity of the art itself that counted – no. Rather, it was the cuisine’s constant position as observer and interpreter. Throughout history chefs created dishes to evoke not only the natural world but also events, people, philosophical thought, and famous works of art such as operas, paintings, poems, and novels. A repertoire was developed that kept civilization alive, for diners to enjoy, to eat, to remember. Almost anything could be recalled or explored through food. Indeed, a great dinner always managed to acknowledge civilization on levels beyond the obvious.

The Western people did not understand this, was what Liang Yeh had told him by phone from far away in Ohio. A meal for them was nothing but food. When it came to the food of China they had their own version, a limited number of dishes that always had to be made the same way with the sauces they would recognize from other restaurants. Sameness was what they wanted. They went out for Chinese food, they ordered their dishes, and they did not like them to change. Liang Yeh said he had met other chefs who’d tried to offer real Chinese dishes on their menus too, but each said the foreigners wouldn’t order them, and each, in time, gave up. Liang Yeh had heard there were enclaves in New York and Los Angeles and other cities where discriminating diners demanded real food, but these diners were always Chinese, never American. There was money in the West but no gourmet, was what Liang had concluded. Xie still remembered the sadness in his voice.

Liang Yeh’s son could change that. This was Xie’s hope. Nephew would be the bridge. So the question was not whether he would succeed in the contest, for he must. The question was how.

As soon as Xie had heard about the Chinese culinary team, he knew the competition was a door that had been opened by fate. The boy had to serve a banquet greater than any Beijing could remember. It had to be such that it would immediately pass into legend and become magic, join the pantheon of stories that swirled around China’s Gods and great adventures. It had to be so fantastic that people in the future would argue about whether it had ever existed at all.

Xie felt a smile touch his own pouchy and soft-hanging face. He thought of raising a hand toward the window, toward the bamboo, but his fingers only fluttered in response. He looked down at them sadly. These hands had been as precise as any surgeon’s. He’d been able to flash-cut vegetables almost thin enough to float up and away like butterflies on a breeze. He had been strong enough to fling an iron pan across the room in a second’s displeasure.

Now all he had was his voice. Never mind; he could still use it. And he would, too. Nephew was coming. He lay still with his eyes on the door.

“Let’s talk about our strategy,” Maggie said to Sam the next morning on the bus to Shaoxing.

He turned, still looking only half-awake despite their quick inhalation of tea and small baozi, plain steamed white buns, before they left the hotel at six-thirty. That was after landing in Shanghai at ten the night before and then going out again, because of course they had to eat.

Shanghai was a gleamingly futuristic place that looked as though it had been built overnight, out of a dream. Tall, jaunty buildings were topped with finials in the shapes of stars or balls or pyramids. The Pearl TV tower, brilliantly lit against the night, looked like a spaceship about to lift off as they looped past it on an elevated expressway. Exuberant capitalism seemed to have been crossed with a 1960s sci-fi TV show. In fact, she thought, the principal design influence on the city really appeared to be The Jetsons. The kitsch of her childhood had become the city of tomorrow: Meet George Jet-son. Jane, his wife.

Shanghai ran around the clock, even more so than Beijing – Sam had explained that to her on the flight down. Beijing had the profundity of government and history, but Shanghai had the aura of culture and excitement. And don’t forget money, he told her. When they came near to their hotel and drove down Huaihai Lu, with its brilliant glass-fronted department stores, the sidewalks were as crowded as they might be at high noon. And after they checked in at the hotel he walked her through the French Concession neighborhood to the restaurant, the plane trees rustling overhead, past the blocks of old stone buildings with their tall windows and wrought-iron Juliet balconies.

She saw people look at him. He didn’t seem to see, though maybe he did and was just used to it. With his angled bones and precisely bumped nose he looked enough like them and enough unlike them to make people stare. And then there was his hair, always bound at his neck by a coated elastic band. Few Chinese men wore long hair. Judging from what she’d seen on the streets in the four days she’d been here, those who did were the young and bohemian, not men Sam’s age. So this too set him apart. It was a choice. It made certain things clear about him at a glance.

By the time they finished dinner it was late. They walked back to their hotel and said good night in the corridor quickly, exchanging only brief wishes for a restful night before retreating to their rooms. She felt grateful for the respite. They had been together for many hours, and even though she was surprised at the ease they had felt, talking throughout the plane ride and the drive into the city and the meal, she was hungry for privacy. Thoughts of Matt and what he had done with this woman were constantly in her, and she had to face them and feel them by herself. She had cried in front of Sam once. That was enough, even though he had seemed not to mind, had actually seemed to like it. She would not do it again.

She latched the door, lay on the bed, and looked down at herself. She saw her pants, unattractively wrinkled in fanned sitting lines. Her shirt had hiked up to show a soft white stripe of stomach. She laid a hand on herself. Middle-aged widow in a Shanghai hotel room. She thought back to walking on the streets outside, the lights, the late-night crowds. Everyone she saw on the street seemed to have been tied to someone else, in pairs, in groups, connected, while she walked beside Sam Liang, acquainted but apart. They were here for other reasons, for business. They were here by arrangement. They talked, they joked, they were companionable, but she was sure they both knew why they were here. In the stretches during which both fell silent, she could feel this awareness bumping against them.

This would be her life now, outside her small circle of close friends. This would be the kind of time she’d have with people, people she interviewed, people she met. She had her friends. She had her family – her mother, anyway – and the people she knew from work. If there was nothing else after that, just business acquaintances like Sam Liang, she could accept it. That would be all right. One thing she would not allow herself to do was become an aggrieved woman. That had been another one of Maggie’s Laws for living through this past year. Now it was even worse, for he had cheated. But she was sticking to the rule she’d set.

At midnight Shanghai time, Maggie dialed Sunny. It was morning in Southern California; her best friend would be up. “Hey,” Sunny said warmly, picking up, knowing it was Maggie. “How are you doing today?”

“Things are moving, at least. This has been an amazingly long day. I’m in Shanghai, seeing the grandparents tomorrow, but I’m not with the original translator – he’s with me.”

Sunny was surprised. “The chef?”

“Yes. He’s down the hall.” Maggie told Sunny what had happened in the twenty-four hours since they last talked, and felt immense relief just at telling her, sharing it, and thus by some subtle magic of friendship dividing her burden of news and surprises in half. This was what people did for each other when they were in alliance. It was the blessing of connectedness. She hung up feeling not just alive again but more peaceful, as if she’d been transported back to a gentler time, before. As soon as she turned out the light she slept.

In the morning she woke up tired, with rings under her eyes. He didn’t look much better when he met her in the hall and went downstairs with her to breakfast. She wondered if he had stayed up too.

Now it was time to plan. He was spread out on his bus seat, thinking. Shanghai was long gone. They streaked along a flat, eight-lane highway, past delta farmland cut into green-ruffled squares.

Finally he said, “The meeting is just with the grandparents?”

“I think the child will be there too.”

“Any of them speak English?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Will they bring a translator?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think of that, since I needed to bring one anyway, just to get here.”

“That’s not really true,” he said.

“Consider my state of mind,” she answered.

“Okay,” he said. “Well. Say they do bring a translator. If that happens, then having me translate is not only redundant, it wastes whatever advantage I could offer you. So if it happens – just if – say I don’t speak Chinese. Say I’m your associate, or your lawyer.”

Maggie eyed his ponytail. “I don’t think you could pass for a lawyer.”

“I’m American. I can pass for anything.”

“To me you look Chinese.”

“Here I look foreign.”

They rode in silence. “Actually that’s good,” she said after a minute. “Though most likely you’ll be translating, so it’ll be moot.”

“And the most important thing will still be your strategy,” said Sam. “What kind of face you will put on, what you will project.”

“What do you suggest?”

“That depends. Let me give you an example.” He softened his voice. “What if you walk in and you meet this child and you see a girl who looks just like your husband? Are you prepared for that?”

“You can’t always tell by looking at a child.”

“No. But there are times when you can. Say it happens. Stop now to think: what will you show? Be ready. When people deal with each other here, no matter what it is, business, personal, big issues, small, a lot rides on the show. The theater. People put great energy into making things seem a certain way. It’s how things work. It’s why you can rent an office here for a month or a year but also for an hour – so you can pull off that important meeting by pretending the office is yours, right down to the secretary, the coffee, the co-workers who are possibly just your friends, dressed up for the day. Everybody does it – individuals, companies, the government. Everybody. Westerners get upset because they’re not used to it; they say it’s dishonest. Here though, everybody knows it’s happening and knows to always watch behind them, so there’s no deception. Put aside your old self. Think this way. They will.”

“Put on a show,” she said. “But what kind?”

“That depends on what you want. You want a sample, isn’t that right? Consent and a sample. Fast.”

“I’ve had the kit right here in my purse since I left L.A. The grandparents are the guardians; they’re the ones who have to agree.”

He nodded, thinking. Finally he said, “I think this is a job for guanxi.”

“What’s that?”

“Connectedness, relationship. If she is his daughter you will be connected to them. You will be like family. Have you thought about how that would feel?”

Yes, she had thought. It would be beyond belief that she could see something of Matt again, something living, going on. When she imagined it she could almost see another life for a second, as if through a break in clouds. It was like an opening into a sweet valley.

He was watching her. “Well,” he said, “feel that, think that. Project your welcome for them, and for her. Believe that you want what they want.”

“So they’ll want to have the test.”

“Exactly.”

“But how do I do that?” she said.

“The Chinese way of answering that would be to tell a story.” He waited until she smiled with her eyes to go on.

“It’s the story of the Sword-Grinding Rain,” he said. “There was this famous general, Guan Gong. Now he’s the God of War, but like a lot of Chinese Gods he was once a real person. He lived in the Three Kingdoms period, around the beginning of the third century.

“So Guan Gong had this famous, incredible sword called Green Dragon on the Moon. He was a great fighter. And one day he was invited to a banquet by the evil Duke, archenemy of his lord. Don’t go! his friends all cried – it’s a trap! No, he said, I must go. And he went, alone. He took no one. At the door of the Duke’s mansion men surrounded him, as he had known they would, and ordered him to surrender his sword, Green Dragon on the Moon, which he did.

“From there, into the banquet chamber. All the lords of the enemy kingdom were seated. No guards or men with weapons were visible, but he saw the ornately paneled walls ringing the room and he knew what those panels meant. Each concealed an assassin, armored, quick, ready to impale him. He was unarmed. He had only one weapon, himself. Just his courage and his intelligence.

“So he bowed low to his hosts, paid them compliments, and offered wishes of health and longevity for their families. Then as the meal was served he started to talk. No one knows what he said, so many times has the story been retold in eighteen centuries, but supposedly he held their attention for hours while he made the case that they should be friends instead of enemies. At the end not only did all at the table stand and applaud, but the very assassins who had been ordered to leap forth and kill him stepped out, cast down their weapons, and embraced him. It was the guanxi of genius.”

She stared at him.

“This is what you need to do with the family.”

“Like that’s going to be easy to do?”

“No one said it would be easy,” he said. “It’s delicate, subtle, difficult, but not impossible. It’s basically an attitude; when you walk in, are you with them or against them? Anyway, when Guan Gong left the banquet that night a servant knelt and offered him back his sword. No sooner had Guan Gong taken Green Dragon on the Moon from him than it was lifted right out of his hands and whirled up to heaven by the Gods. It has been there ever since. Around the banquet’s anniversary every June, in Beijing, it rains a special rain. That’s when the Gods take out Green Dragon on the Moon and polish it. Everybody calls it the Sword-Grinding Rain.”

She thought. “It’s September now,” she said finally, “but maybe it will fall.” And indeed, when she raised her eyes and looked down the aisle past the driver, through the big curved windshield, she saw that the road ahead led straight toward a lowering sky.