馋¹

A Heavy Choking, A Monster Roars, A Neglected Dawn



by Chris Zhongtian Yuan



I heard about dad’s retirement a few weeks ago. For some reason the news hit me really hard. It sounded as if he was finished, as if he was done with making things, as if he retired from being an artist. But I know I am being melodramatic again - he retired from the University he taught for almost 40 years, and perhaps retirement is something he has been waiting for all these years. Until this day, he still rents a studio from the University. And perhaps now he can finally spend more time in the studio.

I remember eating boiled rice for the first time in dad’s studio. I was perhaps 10 and I’d take lunch breaks from my nearby school everyday. Dad would paint all day long but he’d always try to make a couple of dishes, mixing soup, meats and veggies. There was one day he got lazy and simply boiled day-old rice with water, only adding a few pieces of leftover bok choy and salted fish. I bursted into tears when I saw the rice - few ingredients had been hidden inside and for a second I thought I was having plain rice for lunch.  

In Ang Lee’s 1994 film Eat Drink Man Woman, each meal exists as a set of instructions where traces of conflicts and intimacies are meticulously analysed and repressively presented. Each meal is an elaborate way to resemble the very structure of the family — desire pouring over red meat, vegetables devoid of love, soup not longer heals, lingering fogs veiled by steam dumplings. The more implicit a meal is, the more explicit the entanglement is. And when the sense of taste eventually returns, the household patriarch’s desire finds its way back. What had delayed the taste bud? The lack of love.

If food gives us hints of what a person might be going through, then what was dad going through? Was he having one of those days contemplating an artist career that seemed to have no beginning or ending? Was he simply distracted by his thoughts and brushes and only fast to realise lunch was not ready at all? And why was I overreacting to this plain meal? His studio wasn’t big and teaching job wasn’t stressful. His friends got famous. His friends sold for millions. He was still the same until he couldn’t paint anymore. And then mom told me about dad’s mother.

My grandmother was a cook for the local community canteen. She passed away when dad was still in high school. She died of lung cancer and apparently the cause was cooking oil fume. But why didn’t they ventilate the kitchen? I ask my dad. Ventilation? You would be lucky to not miss a meal those days. Dad answers with a smile.

A little bit of research tells me that cooking fumes induced lunger cancer is rather common within non-smoking Han Chinese women. 90% of non-smoking Han women regularly cook family meals. For my grandmother who was cooking for both her family and the local community, it was no surprise that she inhaled much more cooking oil fume than others. After her passing, dad’s family stopped cooking with high heat and oil for a long time. They ate noodles, soups, steamed buns and a lot of boiled rice. Here is a typical recipe:


Vegetables Boiled Rice


Ingredients:

rice, Chinese cabbage, tomatoes, wheat noodles, eggs, spring onions

Sauces:

two teaspoon of soy sauce, a pinch of salt, one teaspoon of white pepper power

Instructions:

1. Add one cup of water into a small pot
2. Add cabbage and tomatoes into the pot once water is boiling, and add half of chopped spring onions
3. Add wheat noodles and cook for 5 minutes or until almost cooked
4. Add leftover (preferably day-old) rice and cook for another 5 minutes
5. Add egg and all sauces. Turn off heat and add the rest of chopped spring onions

It took me 15 minutes to recreate this recipe at home. During the process, I had the weirdest flashback - dad peeling garlic with his typical deadpan facial expression. Those moments stayed with me. Those were the years he had stopped loving mom, I thought. He’d get up every morning and have the exact same boiled rice and a steam bun for breakfast. One day, he picked me up from school and when we almost got home, he asked me, if mom and I were to divorce, who would you pick?

Making a good bowl of boil rice requires almost no culinary skills. The mundane act of boiling water while doing the roughest kind of chopping would do the job. While making the recipe, one can sink into one’s mind completely without paying attention to everything else. Perhaps, the escapism was why dad became obsessed in the first place.

I read about the Transcontinental Railway workers way back in college. It was a freshmen writing seminar about Asian American History. I had the most intelligent, intense and hysterical professor, who would encourage us all to scream at the past. But to scream at the past isn’t easy. Sometimes the past rather prefers to be archived, locked up until the end of times. The emotional labor of digging it out requires courage — the kind of courage that makes you so vulnerable when you reconstruct scenarios and search for psyches in the most cruel environments.

In order to proceed, I choose poetry. I choose to write not as a poet but as a human being trying to piece together evidence of my subjects long buried in the past.


I try to travel with them from southern China. The people

Who were part of the greatest diasporas in human history. Across

Oceans to south, west, east, southwest and southeast. Some

Came to California. In the early 1850s

The America was a wild wild place. To arrive there

Means to make something brand new. Something grand

So grand that they would not be able to understand


I had seen enough injury and death across the ocean. I saw

The body of a fellow traveller, trapped in cold and

The illusion of reaching the wild west. The wild west

Awaits the vulnerable, the brave, the strong, the sick. Snowstorms

Down the mountains and swept them all. The tunnel

Through Sierra Nevada. Then followed

The strike. Death rate is 15 percent if

You are on British ships, and 40 on Peruvian

What they did eat and how

Did they (not) survive


They came from villages of Guangdong where

Rice provided base for preserved vegetables,

Dried fruits, mushrooms, herbs, spices, nuts, teas

Life structured around farming and the milestones

Of birth, marriage, death and mourning. And cycles

Of simple meals: root corps, green vegetables, fish, fruits

They wanted to carry these to the wild west, to travel

Through Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, the redwood forests

And towering Sierra Nevada mountain range. But things were

Dried up, salted, preserved, fermented

Across the ocean


Repeating the names of the foods in an unfamiliar structure feels strangely vivid. By placing them in unexpected spaces between lines, these names came to life in the psychic landscape. I had heard the sounds of pouring boiling water onto dried fungi so that they become edible after 15 minutes or so. I had listened closely to salted fish sizzling in the heated wok. Water is squeezing, water is almost squeezing on lard. Fruits are violently rising to the surface of the pot. The herds tease tenderly. A monster roars, a heavy choking, a neglected dawn. One common recipe goes:


Cantonese Salted Fish Fried Rice


Ingredients:

Oil, onion, salt-cured fish, rice, shaoxing wine, fermented vegetables

Instructions:

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in wok over high heat
2. Add onion until it becomes translucent
3. Add salted fish and cook for 5 minutes until funky aroma rises
4. Add cooked rice
5. Add shaoxing wine, fermented vegetables, more oil and salt

On February 15, 1875, 801 Chinese passengers arrived at the dock of San Francisco. They brought the most familiar recipes and edible items. They never knew that they would change America forever. After the Transcontinental Railway was finished, trade became vast, travel became cheap, time and space were annihilated but forests and buffalo died forever. As the foundation of the nation’s capitalism was laid down, a path to exceptionalism and patriotism was built, and so was a road to racialised wars and endless cynicism.  

I had wondered what gave me the drive to write about the Railway workers. After all, my diaspora years in America were fundamentally different. My privilege almost disqualifies me to write about them. But as I grew older, traces of their collective history became interconnected with my own. Chinaman, or the way people talk to you, or exclude you, or the questions they ask you at border control, or when they joke about you as the “Chinese worker”. As a “Chinese worker” who got an architecture job fresh out of college in Copenhagen, Denmark, I cook a lot of salted fish fried rice. I’d think about ways of joining a wooden beams and how then to multiply those members to hold up a giant structure. I’d think about how to hollow out a fake mountain landscape and fill it with shinny steel things. I stayed up late because people thought that was the only thing I wanted to do. Perhaps, part of me played along with people’s projection of me, and when I finally rebelled I had become this monster figure roaring into nothingness.

I have always wanted to reconfigure my relationship with America, bringing it closer to reality and further away from my imagination. The closer you get, the more illusive it becomes. The kind of illusion only bursts when you leave. I knew I had to get out of it before its fake-niceness devours me entirely. I moved to London to start over. Somehow, I had carried this dialogue from Happy Together (1997) with me:

(Leslie Cheung) - Lai Yiu-fai, we could start over.

(Leslie Cheung) - Do you regret being with me?

(Lai Yiu-fai) - Dam right I do. I had no regrets until I met you. Now my regrets could kill me. 

Returning to reality proves to be less interesting and sometimes unnecessary. Until today, I still grapple with the question - how did it all start?


Weeks before leaving Texas, I received a phone call from him. I have only met him once in my entire life. For less than 24 hours, we were cramped in his one-bed apartment. Beijing had one of its darkest, most polluted days. We had Pho, went to his place, had sex and the next day he worked on his upcoming solo show in the same apartment. His assistant showed up to deliver materials, prepare box lunches, and translate a broken piece of writing. We lost contact until one day he called me - he says, would you marry me? I remember listening to those words in the barren landscape of Texas. Then I heard about his wedding, only to realise we were performing for each other all these years.

I still remember the only meal we had in the pho restaurant. The performance was on and food was average. Later I tried to make pho at home. To make a classic pho is almost impossible at home. The soup base alone is a laborious project:


Homemade Pho

Broth:

Beef knuckles, onion, fresh ginger, cinnamon sticks, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, star anise, whole cloves, cardamom pod, salt, fish sauce

Assembly:

Dried rice noodles, raw eye steak, thinly slice onions, cilantro leaves

Instructions:

1. Add beef bone in a large pot of water to boil for 5 minutes. Drain bones and rinse and then add bones back to stockpot covered by cold water
2. Grill onions and ginger on stove for 10 minutes until they become charred
3. Add cinnamon sticks, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, start anise, cloves and the black cardamon pod to a dry frying pan. Place onto low heat and cook for 5 minutes
4. Bring stockpot to a gentle simmer and add charred onions and ginger as well as toasted spices
5. Add salt, fish sauce, rock sugar and continue to summer broth for 3 hours
6. Remove bones, onions and ginger from broth then strain broth through a fine mesh strainer
7. Soak dried rice noodles in hot water for 20 minutes until soft
8. Place slices of raw beef into bowl and top with hot broth. Finish broth with onion slices and cilantro

The years after I first met him, his success soared. Meanwhile I hustled. In those times, Pho became a luxury that can only be recreated at home. The art market became less predictable. Dad stopped selling completely. I worked as a dormitory advisor for a year just to cover rent during college. Mom mailed me a bag of instant hot dry noodles and I ate it for months. Later, I learned how to make hot dry noodles at home: peanut butter instead of sesame sauce, garlic rinsed in boiled water, flavoured preserved vegetables are salty and sour, nothing sweet goes in, bitterness mixed with spices, noodles are entangled but then forcefully separately by wind and oil.

Years after our first meeting, our intimacy turned into conflict and eventually transcends to friendship, marked by mutual therapy, gossip sessions and the occasional gesture of holding each other up. Chinese queer diaspora, somehow the previously strange-sounding term, have now become synonymous with who we are. I came to peace with who I am, where I am and what I’m cooking for dinner. I never admitted to him that I have always been a fan of his work, ever since I first saw it ten years ago. When I told him about my move to yet a new place, he said to me:

New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.

The city will follow you. You will roam the same

Streets. And you will age in the same neighbourhoods;

In these same houses you will grow gray.

Always you will drive in this city. To another land — don’t you know

There is no ship for you, there is no railroad.


When journey becomes remote and unreachable, one’s longing becomes intertwined with a collective from another time and place. The imagined loss, forgotten violence, intimate tales, songs that linger, reconciliatory meals, recipes that are bland. But luxury divides, while blandness reunites us all.

And my time with dad is now tied up with the most bland recipe. These days, I often wonder what would dad do now after his retirement. He finally found a new gallery to support his work, regardless of sales or medium or content or form. I wonder if he still makes boiled rice for breakfast. I wonder if he is actually happier than most of his friends.  

袁中天 著


几周前，我听到父亲退休的消息。因为一些原因，这消息对我打击很大。听起来好像他的人生结束了，好像他再也不会创作，好像他不再想做艺术家。但我知道我又在夸张了 – 在大学里当了40年老师，也许退休早已是他这些年一直在等待的事情。直到现在，他还在学校里租着工作室。这之后他终于可以花更多时间待在工作室里了。

我还记得第一次在父亲的画室里吃烫饭的场景。当时我大概十岁，每天中午，我都会从附近的学校回到父亲的工作室午休。父亲经常一整天都在创作，但他总会尽力多做几个菜给我，有汤，有肉，有蔬菜。有天他偷懒，就只用几片青菜叶和咸鱼，加剩饭和水一起煮。当看到饭的时候我哭了 – 碗里看起来只有白饭，那一瞬间我以为自己的午饭就只有这个。

在李安的电影《饮食男女》（1994）里，每顿饭都像一连串的指示，有关矛盾和亲密的线索在每一餐饭里被表达，剖析和竭力抑制。每顿精心制作的宴席都喻示着家庭的结构—— 欲望被浇在红肉上，没有爱的蔬菜，不再治愈的汤，热气腾腾的蒸饺遮掩住迟疑的真相。料理越复杂/含蓄，其中心思就越露骨。而当味觉终于恢复，一家之长也寻回了他的欲望。什么干扰了他的味蕾？爱欲的缺失。

如果食物能够透露一个人在经历什么，那当时的父亲呢？他是否在某天曾思考过那无头无尾的艺术家生涯？还是仅仅在画画和胡思乱想的时候，突然想起来午饭还没做好？而我又为什么会对那碗白饭反应激烈？他的画室不大，当老师也没有太大压力。他的朋友们都出名了。他的朋友们作品都卖了上百万。可是一直到他不再能画画，父亲的事业都没有起色。然后妈妈给我讲了奶奶的故事。

奶奶曾经在当地社区食堂当厨师。父亲还在上高中时她就去世了。奶奶死于肺癌，而这明显是吸入厨房油烟造成的。他们为什么不给厨房通风？我问父亲。通风？那个时候每天能吃饱就已经很幸运了，父亲微笑着回答。

一些初步的了解让我知道，在不吸烟的汉族女性中，厨房油烟造成的肺癌很普遍。90%不吸烟的汉族女性规律性的为家庭做饭。而像奶奶这样，需要同时为她的家庭和社区做饭的女性，当然会吸入更多。在她去世后，父亲家里人很长时间都没有用高温和热油做饭。他们吃很多的面条，汤，包子和很多烫饭。以下是最常见的食谱：


蔬菜烫饭


食材：

米饭、白菜、西红柿、面条、鸡蛋、葱花

调料：

酱油两茶匙、盐少许、白胡椒粉一茶匙


步骤：

1.在小锅中加入1杯水

2. 水开后将白菜菜和西红柿放入锅中，加入一半切碎的葱

3. 加入面条煮5分钟或至差不多熟

4. 加入剩下的（最好是前一天剩下的）米饭，再煮 5 分钟

5. 加入鸡蛋和所有调料。关火，加入剩下的葱花


我花了15分钟在家里重做这道菜。过程中，我经历了最奇怪的闪回 – 父亲如同往常般面无表情地剥蒜。这些时刻一直与我共存着。这就是他开始不再深爱母亲的那些年吧，我想。那段时间，他每天早餐都会吃一模一样的烫饭和蒸包子。有一天，他放学来接我，快走到家时，他问，如果我和妈妈离婚了，你会选哪个？

做一碗好吃的烫饭几乎不需要任何料理技巧。只需要简单的处理食材后，滚沸的水就能同时搞定一切。做这道菜时，一个人可以完全沉浸在自己的思绪里，不用关心别人。或许是这对现实的逃避让父亲如此沉迷。

大一时，在有关美国亚裔历史的写作讨论课上，我读到有关太平洋铁路（the Transcontinental Railway）劳工的记载。我有位最睿智，热情和容易激动的教授，常鼓励我们对过去发出质疑，但这并非易事。有时过去更愿意被封档，被紧锁，一直到时间尽头。而挖掘过往的情感劳动往往需要很多勇气——当在最残酷的时刻试图重构情境，追寻灵性时，这种勇气让人变得无比脆弱。

为了更进一步，我选择了诗。但我并不以诗人的身份写作，而是以人的身份写作——一个试图拼凑起那些，被长埋在过去的，有关自我的线索的人。



I try to travel with them from southern China. The people

我试图和他们一起从南方出发。他们

Who were part of the greatest diasporas in human history. Across

是人类历史上最深远的迁徙之一。穿越

Oceans to south, west, east, southwest and southeast. Some

海洋去南方，西方，东方，西南和东南。他们有的

Came to California. In the early 1850s

去了加州。在1850年代早期

The America was a wild wild place. To arrive there

美利坚是一片荒野。抵达

Means to make something brand new. Something grand

意味着新的开始。是庞大的

So grand that they would not be able to understand

庞大的让人无法理解


I had seen enough injury and death across the ocean. I saw

我在海上看到了各种伤害和死亡。我看到

The body of a fellow traveller, trapped in cold and

同伴的身体被冰冷困住

The illusion of reaching the wild west. The west

到达西部的幻象。西部

Awaits the vulnerable, the brave, the strong, the sick. Snowstorms

在等待所有脆弱，坚强，疾病。冰雪暴

Down the mountains and swept them all. The tunnel

从山顶横扫一切。隧道

Through Sierra Nevada. Then followed

穿越内华达山脉。然后

The strike. Death rate is 15 percent if

发生了罢工。死亡率是百分之十五如果

You are on British ships, and 40 on Peruvian

你在英国货船，在秘鲁船上是百分之四十

What they did eat and how

他们吃了什么

Did they (not) survive

他们活（没活）下来了吗


They came from villages of Guangdong where

他们来自广东农村

Rice provided base for preserved vegetables,

村里米饭用来做咸菜的底料

Dried fruits, mushrooms, herbs, spices, nuts, teas

干果，蘑菇，草药，辣椒，坚果，茶叶

Life structured around farming and the milestones

生活流动于耕种

Of birth, marriage, death and mourning. And cycles

出生，婚姻，死亡和哀悼的里程碑。一轮轮的

Of simple meals: root corps, green vegetables, fish, fruits

便饭：块根作物，绿色蔬菜，鱼，水果

They wanted to carry these to the wild west, to travel

他们背负饭菜去西部，去出发

Through Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, the redwood forests

穿过太浩湖，优胜美地，红杉林

And towering Sierra Nevada mountain range. But things were

冲天的内华达山脉

Dried up, salted, preserved, fermented

干化，盐渍，腌制，发酵

Across the ocean

横跨海洋


在陌生的框架里重述食物的名称感觉异常生动。被放置在诗句间意外的空隙中，这些名字得以在精神的地理中复活。我曾听到沸水被倒在干木耳上的声音，这样它们大概15分钟后就可以吃了。我曾听到咸鱼在热锅上发出细微地嗞嗞声。水分被挤出，猪油中的水分几乎在被挤出来。水果猛地浮出锅的表面。牛群温柔地厮磨。怪物在咆哮，一切沉重地令人窒息，拂晓无人留意。一种常见的食谱是：

广式咸鱼炒饭

食材和调料：

食用油、洋葱、咸鱼、熟米饭、绍兴料酒、咸菜


步骤：

1875年2月15日，801个中国乘客到达了旧金山的码头。他们带来了最常用的菜谱和食物。他们从未知晓自己将永远的改变美利坚。太平洋铁路修好后，贸易变得繁盛，旅行变得廉价，时间和空间被湮灭而森林和水牛也从此消逝。当这个国家的资本积累被夯实，一条通往排外主义（exceptionalism），爱国主义和种族战争的道路也将铺开。

我曾思考过自己有关铁路劳工的写作的动力是什么。毕竟，我游散在美国的年代与他们已经截然不同。而我拥有的特权几乎让我没有资格着手有关他们的写作。但当我成长，他们的群体的历史越来越与我自己的纠缠勾连。是“中国人”，是人们跟你讲话的方式，抑或是他们排除你的方式，又或是在入境时他们的盘问，或是他们如何开玩笑说你是“中国工人”。作为一个刚毕业，在丹麦哥本哈根找到建筑工作的“中国工人”，我做过很多次咸鱼炒饭。我会苦思如何做好一个木结构，然后如何复制它们使其最终能够撑起一个更巨大的结构。我会思索如何将一个假山挖空然后用亮闪闪的不锈钢将它填满。我要熬夜工作，因为人们觉得这会是我唯一想做的事情。也许，一部分的我擅长与人们对我的想象游戏，然而当我最终选择抵抗，我便成了那只朝着虚无咆哮的异兽。

我一直想重新审视我和美国的关系，把它放进现实，抽离出我的想象。有时你靠它越近，它会变得越让人迷惑。这种幻觉只会在你离开时突然崩裂。我知道自己必须摆脱它，在这种虚假的好感将我完全吞噬之前。我搬到伦敦，重新开始。不知为何，我一直惦记着《春光乍泄》（1997）里的这段对话。


（张国荣） - 梁耀辉，让我们从头来过。


（张国荣） - 你后悔了？

（梁耀辉）- 我后悔得要死。没见你之前我一点都不后悔，现在我后悔得要死。


回到现实很无聊，也很没必要。直到今天，我都在尝试解开这个问题 – 一切都是怎么开始的？

离开德州前几周，我收到了他的电话。他是一个艺术家，我人生中只在十多年前见过他一次，并且不超过24小时。在那几个小时里，我们挤在他狭窄的，只有一个床的公寓里。那几天正是北京最昏暗，污染最严重的时候。我们在胡同里的餐厅吃了越南河粉，然后去他的公寓，糟糕地做爱。第二天，他搬去客厅为他即将到来的个展工作。他的助理出现在家里，寄送材料，准备午餐，翻译琐碎的写作。然后我们失去了联系，直到有天他打电话给我——他问，你要跟我结婚吗？我还记得在德州荒寂的风景里听到这些话，这些荒谬的，可笑的，可悲的词语。然后我听说了他结婚的消息，才意识到，我们是如何在这些年里为彼此表演。

我还记得，在那间越南餐厅里，我们吃过的那唯一一顿饭。扮演开始了，那食物却普通。之后我尝试自己在家里做pho吃。要在家里做道原汁原味的越南河粉几乎不可能。熬汤底是一件十分费时费力的事情。


家庭自制河粉


汤底：

牛大骨、洋葱、新鲜生姜、肉桂棒、香菜籽、茴香籽、八角、整瓣丁香、豆蔻荚、盐、鱼露


配料：

干米粉、生牛眼肉、洋葱（切薄片）、香菜叶


步骤：

我第一次见到他后的几年，他的事业很成功。与此同时，我在拼命打工赚钱。那段时间里，一碗Pho是只能自己在家尝试复制的奢侈。艺术市场越来越难以预测。父亲的画不再有人买了。为了付大学的房租，我在学生宿舍里当管理员。母亲寄给我一大包方便面，我吃了好几个月。之后，我学会了自己在家做热干面：用花生酱替代芝麻酱，开水烫一下蒜，腌制好的蔬菜又咸又酸，不要放糖，调料里混合着苦味，面条会坨成一团但又会被油和风干作用弄散。

我们初次见面后的几年，彼此间的亲密演化成了分歧，最终又变成友谊，其中有相互的慰籍，有八卦，有偶尔给予的激励。“流散海外的中国酷儿”，这一度听起来怪异的词语，现在竟成了我们的代名词。我开始接受我自己，接受我所在的地方和我给自己做的晚饭。我从来没有向他坦白过，其实从十年前第一次看到开始，我就一直很喜欢他的作品。当我告诉他我要搬去一个从未去过的地方，他说：


你不会找到一个新的国家，不会找到另一片海岸。

这个城市会永远跟踪你。

你会走向同样的街道，衰老

在同样的住宅区，白发苍苍在这些同样的屋子里。

你会永远结束在这个城市。不要对别的事物抱什么希望：

那里没有载你的船，那里也没有你的路。


（黄灿然 译）



当旅途变得遥远和不可抵达，一个人的等待总会和别处的时空混淆。那些想象中的失去，被忘记的暴虐，亲密的私语，萦绕的歌曲，和解的餐饭，平淡的菜谱。奢华间离，细水长流却能让我们重新相聚。

于是现在最平常的菜谱联结起我与父亲。这些天，我经常会想父亲在退休后会做点什么。他最终找到了一个能代理的画廊，他们对销售额，媒介，内容或者形式没有任何要求。我好奇他早餐是否还在吃烫饭。我在想，他实际上是否要比他绝大多数的朋友快乐。