It was still raining when Jingzhe (惊蛰, “The Awakening of Insects” in the Chinese lunar calendar) arrived. Spring came late in the Guimao Year of the Rabbit. Just when it seemed to be getting warmer, there would be cold spells. Temperatures fluctuated, as if summer and winter came to visit in one day.
Fresh green buds sprouted at the tip of branches, but the sudden cold wind made them beat a retreat; they were like a baby at the exit of a womb, peeking out but also struggling to stay in. Spring hasn’t arrived; it’s staying silent, not daring to make a sound.
In the cold weather, I stayed in, fondly recalling the dishes that my mother made over the decades.
Daily meals in ordinary homes are actually very simple; they’re made with simple ingredients and simple cooking methods. The ingredients are nothing fancy or unusual — only local, seasonal ingredients are used — but the way they’re made is passed down from generation to generation. They’re not the most creative dishes, but certainly memorable ones.
I like Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu’s films — Good Morning, Late Spring, An Autumn Afternoon, Tokyo Story… The characters in these films are usually ordinary folks living ordinary lives. Families like any other sit around a small table, quietly eating. In the frame, a piece of mackerel lies on a longish earthen plate, like a sliver of autumn wind during the change of seasons. “Ah, an autumn wind…” the lady of the house seems to notice the autumn wind rustling through the trees in the courtyard. She lets out a depressing sigh.
Perhaps the lines in Ozu’s films are all internal monologues: saying “good morning” with a smile and a bow in the morning on a tram platform and saying “goodnight” before one goes to bed. Day after day, countless monologues are repeated over and over again. There’s no need for dialogue.
The man of the house puts on a tie and is ready to leave the house. The lady of the house walks out of the kitchen and asks, “You called me?”
Actually he did not. He is used to talking to himself.
But she tends to hear noises and always has her apron on. She would always leave her chores aside and ask, “Did you call me?”
For couples living under the same roof for a long time, intimacy no longer has anything to do with romance.
It is a tragedy if “something happens” and a blessing if “nothing happens”.
A blessing when nothing happens
One slowly comes to appreciate that at the end of the Second World War, after the fire and smoke had lifted, survivors of the wasteland took a deep breath and simply rejoiced that everything was peaceful and nothing was happening. Ozu’s films deeply cherished ordinary life in which nothing happened.
It is a tragedy if “something happens” and a blessing if “nothing happens”.
Politicians always hope that there’s something happening. If something happens, they will have a bargaining chip to gain money and power. But ordinary folks just hope that nothing will happen so that they can be safe and live their lives well.
Perhaps the old couple had a 16-year-old son who perished in battle in China, leaving no bones behind like many 16-year-olds of that generation.
But the war has ended. Returning to their ordinary lives, the old couple did not want to remember the unhappy past. They stoically pan-fried their mackerel as they always did and said “good morning” to the people they met on the tram platform. It is a luxury to say “good morning” — they were all survivors of the war. That morning, the sun shone brightly on the platform.
To rely on and live with someone, and to reply to each other’s monologues — what a luxury that is.
To rely on and live with someone, and to reply to each other’s monologues — what a luxury that is.
After surviving the war, a widowed father and his daughter couldn’t bear to be apart. The daughter’s wedding was postponed again and again. But it was finally time for her to get married. On their last night together, both of them could not sleep.
In the bathroom the next morning, a neatly folded towel was laid on the basin, a cup was filled and some toothpaste squeezed on the toothbrush. It was the last time that the daughter would help prepare these things for her aged father.
In the film Late Spring, the camera slowly pans from the towel to the cup and the toothbrush — the most ordinary things in life. There was no dialogue. Only those who have experienced war would understand how precious these things are. It is only because you are alive that you can brush your teeth and wash your face.
Ozu’s films seem to be passé; I haven’t heard anyone talk about them in a long time. I would occasionally rewatch Tokyo Story and observe the elegant Setsuko Hara talk about life’s blessings and happiness — she lost her husband in the war shortly after they got married. Her mother-in-law couldn’t bear to see her daughter-in-law widowed at such a tender age. “So young and kind-hearted…” her mother-in-law would say. But Hara would reply that she was “happy and blessed”, with tears in her eyes.
From Ozu to Taiwanese film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-eda, when the teary-eyed ordinary folks say that they are “happy”, are they saying it to the arrogant and tyrannical rulers?
Have we ever questioned what she meant by “happiness”?
From Ozu to Taiwanese film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-eda, when the teary-eyed ordinary folks say that they are “happy”, are they saying it to the arrogant and tyrannical rulers?
In a gentle and subtle way, the ordinary folks portrayed in A City of Sadness showed rulers the true meaning of happiness with tears in their eyes. It was like the happiness that Hsin Shu-fen spoke of on a mountain filled with silver grass.
Those politicians who promoted A City of Sadness as if it was a political achievement — did they truly understand the film?
In a silent spring such as this, when a leap month follows Jingzhe, the cold spring will drag on for a while. A war in a certain region has dragged on for a year. We see many heroes in the news, playing the power game and fighting one another somewhat like a farce and also like a comedy. But we do not see the tragedy of people’s sufferings during this past year. Having been humiliated by war, will a film director over there rise up to produce a tear-jerking story of a bowl of piping hot beet soup?
As the biting cold persisted outside, I stayed in, catching Kore-eda’s The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House. From Ozu who had experienced war, to Hou who was born post-war, and Kore-eda who was born in 1962, I see a beautiful, quiet and gentle continuity.
They are all quiet men. Their films are slow-going and long, like a family eating an ordinary meal together.
Just that Kore-eda’s films make me uncomfortable sometimes. His film Shoplifters talks about the invisible poor hidden behind the glamorous metropolis. How can that be? I was shocked when I watched it for the first time. Do some people in Tokyo actually live such lives?
Are we all tourists in a bustling city, in a hurry to admire its prosperity yet blind to the struggling poor behind all the glitz and glamour?
The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House was originally a Japanese manga focusing on cooking and culinary arts. Kore-eda turned it into a comparison between the maiko (apprentice geisha) and the makanai (cook in the boarding house).
The glitz and glamour of the stage is fleeting. Can the dishes of everyday life also fill us with the same type of wonder and amazement?
The 16-year-old maiko’s beauty took my breath away. Meanwhile, the makanai, also a village girl, certainly doesn’t belong on stage, but she brought the audience to the ordinary market of everyday life.
I enjoyed watching the young girl picking out ingredients at the market with her large canvas bag. It reminded me of my childhood when I helped Mother carry a vegetable basket while walking among market vendors.
Kore-eda made me marvel at the beauty of the maiko. Then, he inspired me to bask in the joy of cooking a simple meal — a meal that the maikos ate and marvelled at.
The maiko, who were marvelled at by the audience, sat around the kitchen marvelling at the makanai’s cooking.
Appreciating the everyday
The glitz and glamour of the stage is fleeting. Can the dishes of everyday life also fill us with the same type of wonder and amazement?
Would art, without the foundation of ordinary life, be empty and strange? Are we exhausting all means to be different only to find that we are further and further away from daily life?
How many more people who live practical and simple lives care about “art” that has been intentionally sensationalised by the media and the market?
Over and over again, I watched the makanai buy Rausu kombu (dried kelp) and katsuobushi and speak to the stall owner just to prepare a good bowl of Kyoto-style kitsune udon.
My friend liked this scene too and tried to make the udon while following the recipe, succeeding on the first try and encouraging me to give it a go.
I felt as if Mother was watching the drama series right beside me. It felt like we were buying kombu and katsuobushi together at the market and Mother was telling me how to chop the white part of the garlic sprout.
My friend sent me a beautiful box of Rausu kombu, which I made into a broth after adding some katsuobushi. Sitting on top of a ring of blue flames, the clay pot looked like a Buddha statue. I simmered the Rausu kombu for an hour on low heat, as if wanting to recreate the taste of the clear blue ocean, and remembering how the kombu would have floated and danced on calm waters.
And this is how the udon’s broth is made in the maiko house in Kyoto — slow and delicate, paired with some minced ginger, two pieces of seasoned deep-fried tofu pouches, two blanched garlic sprouts and tufts of noodles, looking like the sideburn of the charming 16-year-old maiko swirling around in the broth.
I felt as if Mother was watching the drama series right beside me. It felt like we were buying kombu and katsuobushi together at the market and Mother was telling me how to chop the white part of the garlic sprout. The green parts have a different flavour of their own too.
Tofu pockets can be cooked low and slow (㸆) first for added flavour. Mother’s cooking methods — low and slow (㸆), braise (焖), roast (煨), liu (馏, using steam from boiling water in the cauldron to reheat frozen cooked food), dry-fry (煸) and simmer (炖) — are all about heat control. Heat control is what turns ordinary ingredients magical — without the mastery of heat control, even the most spectacular ingredients become mediocre and dull.
Mother has never watched the films of Ozu, Hou or Kore-eda. But I still had the feeling that she was sitting right beside me, watching me as I broke the kombu in half, put them into the pot, filled the pot with water, placed the pot on a small gas stove, and watched steam coming from under the edges of the lid. About 30 minutes later, I added katsuobushi and tasted the soup several times. My friend reminded me: “Make sure the katsuobushi doesn’t overpower the kombu.”
Yes, Rausu kombu is the star of the dish and has a light flavour. If too much katsuobushi is added too early, it will overpower the lightness of kombu. If lightness in flavour is the star, richness needs to appropriately take the supporting role.
I placed the bowl of piping hot udon in front of Mother’s picture. It may be light in flavour and very ordinary, but Mother would have loved it.
Like Ozu and Hou, if one wants to tell the story of the happiness that comes with serenity after war, the smiles of teary-eyed survivors, or the ordinary people’s contentment and helplessness, their films must keep “intensity” and “passion” in check, and not produce films like Saving Private Ryan that are neither here nor there.
People who love heroism couldn’t care less about people’s lives. “Saving” is in fact a “gimmick”.
Sincere creators do not treat human lives as a “gimmick” — they would refrain from crying in the midst of immense grief and loss; they would rather cook a meal for the survivors who have not experienced such calm and peace in a long time.
So, on Mother’s death anniversary, I made a bowl of udon with Rausu kombu. It felt like a meal Mother and I made together — I was very pleased. I placed the bowl of piping hot udon in front of Mother’s picture. It may be light in flavour and very ordinary, but Mother would have loved it.
Young dreams crushed by war
Mother didn’t have many photographs. Caring for her children in the war and fleeing from place to place, she probably didn’t think to take photographs.
But I kept a photograph of her in her teenage years, when she was about 15 or 16 and studying at a normal university in Xi’an. She was one of the first women in the city to attend a new-style school. She loved films and novels and was really artsy. She also watched Hollywood films, so she knew to lie sideways on the grass when taking a photograph.
I wonder what romantic aspirations did that 16-year-old lady have?
Did she dream of becoming a celebrity, shining ever so brightly on stage? But in the end, she turned out to be an ordinary housewife trying to take care of her family in the war.
The maiko shone brightly; the makanai was down-to-earth.
Mother had dreams. But her dreams were all crushed.
Mother had dreams. But her dreams were all crushed. The Second Sino-Japanese War broke out and classes were suspended. Young students at the age of 16 either fought on the front line or formed paramedic teams, carrying injured soldiers on stretchers and dressing their wounds. She was only 16 — that girl who had lain sideways on the grass fled from place to place in the war from then on.
She told me that so many people wanted to escape and the train was about to leave. Carrying two children with her, she didn’t know how to squeeze onto the train. In the end, she flung her two children into the train from a window. She thought to herself: “As long as my kids are safe.”
But the cabin was filled with people and her children landed on people’s heads and were flung out of the window again.
She told me this story as she was plucking chive blossoms. Fortunately, at that time, I wasn’t born yet. The two children are my elder brother and elder sister.
It’s a solemn event celebrating the fact that the family can still eat together. Traumatised by the war, ordinary people knew the importance of giving thanks to heaven and earth, and all sentient beings.
When she later saw her family sitting around a table for dinner, she must have had mixed feelings. Would it have felt like a dream? She absent-mindedly rubbed some cream on the burn on her hand she got from pan-frying a fish in hot oil.
She shared that during the war, she would stuff a little note with her and Father’s names and our address into our pockets, sometimes with a few grams of gold, hoping that kind-hearted people who found us on the streets would send us back home.
Those frightening stories about her wandering life were told to us at the dinner table.
I began to understand why Ozu’s and Hou’s films always depicted a family sitting around a table for dinner.
It’s a solemn event celebrating the fact that the family can still eat together. Traumatised by the war, ordinary people knew the importance of giving thanks to heaven and earth, and all sentient beings.
Food to bind memories and make new ones
Everywhere she went, Mother not only learnt how to cook but also learnt how to cook well so that she could feed her family. For every additional day she gained, she gave thanks. For every additional meal that she prepared for her family, she felt blessed.
This year, Jingzhe coincidentally fell on the 15th day of the lunar month, when a full moon rose from the river. Mother always worshipped the full moon: the Lantern Festival, Ghost Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival all fell on the full moon; the table on which we ate was round as well. Perhaps she had been praying for the fullness and reunion of the family amid all the brokenness.
She always talked about solar terms — after Jingzhe, Guyu (谷雨) would be around the corner.
Solar terms are more important than the days and months of the calendar. Solar terms are like one’s body — there’s Xiaoshu (小暑), Dashu (大暑), Xiaohan (小寒) and Dahan (大寒). Bailu (白露) and Shuangjiang (霜降) are the feelings of one’s body. She seldom recalled what happened in a particular year, but mostly shared that during Dongzhi (冬至), she and our neighbours would bring out the millstone, gather the glutinous rice, grind some rice milk, pour them into sacks and press on them with a stone slab. And water would ooze out from the heavy sacks.
That was when she learnt how to make tangyuan (glutinous rice balls) and nian gao (rice cakes) when we stayed at Dalongdong, an enclave of the Tong’an people. Whenever rice cakes were steamed on high heat, the entire street would be fragrant.
Back then, these things — wrapping zongzi (rice dumplings), rolling tangyuan and steaming nian gao — were all done at the entrance of the alleyway. A few households would gather the ingredients and prepare the food together, distributing them when everything’s made.
... as long as the natural order still exists, people will live well, sit around a round table, and eat the most ordinary meals every day.
Mother lived her life following the solar terms and the Chinese almanac, following the flow of the Five Elements (五行) and regulating the natural order of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water.
The regular ebb and flow of wind and rain is indeed a more important natural order than ensuring that the country is prosperous and the people are at peace.
At 16, Mother unfortunately witnessed a catastrophic point in time when the country was not prosperous and the people were not at peace. But she firmly believed that as long as the wind and rain came and went as they should, and as long as the natural order still exists, people will live well, sit around a round table, and eat the most ordinary meals every day.
After the war, survivors need only properly live their lives — the people who died will never come back — and say “good morning”.
Through cooking, Mother taught me to respect the balance of the Five Elements and taste sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter, pungent, or even mouldy, smelly and bland. In my mental map, I placed the nine tastes into "jiu gong" (九宫), just as ancient Chinese astrologers did when they divided the heavenly palace into nine equal spaces resembling the character "井" (jing). This is how my taste buds work and the way I respect all forms of life.
Mother brought me to the market where I first learnt about ordinary people. She loved and respected the common folk. Wherever she went, she trusted and relied on them, she plucked vegetables, ground rice milk and steamed nian gao, hoping that the wind and rain would come and go according to the law of nature. And that after the war, survivors need only properly live their lives — the people who died will never come back — and say “good morning”. They need only rebuild the ruins, prepare a meal, have the family eat together, and talk about their happiness and blessings.
This article was first published in Chinese on United Daily News as “五行九宮蔬食12——媽媽的家常菜”.
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