The Last Chinese Chef (15 page)

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.

There is always a tension between imagination and reality, between what we wish for and what it is the Gods have granted us. Civilized man finds appeasement through the system of gestures and symbols used to mediate between the two — the careful grooming of appearances, the maintenance of face, the funeral feasts and wedding banquets we put on even as we know they will ruin us. Rich or poor, people feel the same. During my childhood in the alleys of Peking, we were always hungry. If we ate at all it was
cu cha dan fan,
crude tea and bland rice. Yet on this we never failed to congratulate ourselves, as if this were our choice, our philosophy. We would proclaim simple but nutritious fare the best, and our lives, for a moment, would satisfy us.

— LIAN G WEI,
The Last Chinese Chef

 

 

I
n 1966, the year Nainai died, I was seventeen. I was born in the same year as our nation, a fact that gave me pride and also my name, Guolin, the country’s Welcome Rain. This was my generation. Later we were termed the Lost Ones because we had lost our educations, but I always bristled at that. Being lost was a state of mind. On the contrary, we showed we had the fierceness for anything. When we were sent to the countryside in 1970 we endured privations such as even our mothers and fathers never did. I went two years without oil and salt. That is something most people today cannot imagine. Yet those ten years of chaos did not break us. The one thing that did break us had already happened, might in fact have made the Cultural Revolution possible, and that was the famine. Looking back, I have thought that only people who were starved as children could do the things we young people did.