At age four, waking up and dressing at the chilly winter dawn was always difficult for me, whenever Grandma would cover me in her warm arms and tell me stories about Chinese immortals to take me out of sweet dreams. In her descriptions, immortals were omnipotent to figure out everything in both heaven and earth: they could control the natural law of all the plants and animals. Grandma even bragged that she witnessed those immortals with long hair and gorgeous clothes conjuring in our hometown’s forest: they easily switched themselves between animals and human beings. Hearing this, the sleepyhead would immediately awaken and request more details. “Wake up faster tomorrow and I will tell you more.”
Grandma would take me to kindergarten and pick me up later in the afternoon. At that time, Grandma, Dad, Mom, and I lived together. When we returned home, she started the “complicated” cooking: I was picky when I was little, so Grandma saw cooking as a tough task. Why did warm home cooking become annoying? Because there was a picky child in the family. That’s me. Mom more than once told me that Grandma’s daily exercise was to chase after and feed me at that time.
The “complicated” cooking mission lasted eighteen years: I went from an infant to a high school student. When I turned fifteen, my parents and younger sister moved into a new house. I stayed with Grandma, who cooked for me in the house near my school. As a commuter student, I ate all three meals and took a noontime nap at home every day.
In summer, with the highest temperature exceeding forty degrees Celsius at noon, everyone took a nap in a cool room with the air conditioner on. When I would leave my comfortable cool room, unwillingly heading to school, I would see Grandma lying on the sofa with only an electric fan spinning. Grandma always got all sweaty, holding a palm leaf hand fan while sleeping. Dad told her thousands of times to turn on the air conditioner before sleeping, but she hardly listened.
Who could blame Grandma? She was born and raised in a rural village called Yudi, a mountainous area of Youyang county, which is on the border of my city, Chongqing, and she never left there until my birth. Grandma was born at the time when the nation was just founded, and she grew up with the new country, which meant she suffered a lot: the Civil War between Communists and Republicans, the Great Famine, the landlord period, and the Cultural Revolution. Like many Chinese women from the countryside, Grandma had short hair, always wore a thimble, and had a pair of hands full of calluses. In the first half of her life, as the whole country went hungry, she was busy cutting firewood, feeding livestock, and growing vegetables, focusing on how to not starve. But later, Grandma’s life completely changed when I was born: she left the huge mountains where she stayed for more than fifty years. Her first visit to a metropolis, Chongqing, one of the four municipalities in modern China, was to look after me.
Grandma’s new “mission” was to be the family cook, which meant my personal chef when I started high school. Even though there were only two people for every meal, Grandma cooked four or five dishes covering all categories: cold appetizers, such as braised shredded pig ear and chicken claw; meat dishes like scrambled eggs with tomatoes, fried shredded beef, and spicy fish; vegetables like fried carrots or lettuce; soups such as Chinese yam and pork rib soup. These common and popular dishes perfectly satisfied my stomach. I enjoyed them all the time. Grandma cared about every meal: from purchasing ingredients to cooking them into dishes, probably because she had surrendered to my picky stomach.
Even though such cuisines were the most common home-cooking on the Chinese family table, Grandma sometimes was still obsessed with rural delicacies such as fermented bean curd and fried bamboo shoots. My picky stomach would make mischief: I did not like such “natural” ingredients, so every time Grandma made such special taste food, I hardly ate anything and instead stealthily ordered grilled skewered food for delivery, such as beef, chicken wings, and eggplant. Why stealthily? With a height of 6 feet but only 115 pounds, I had been too slim, like “bamboo” that the breeze could even easily blow me down(in Grandma's words), so my family always worried about my health and cared about my dietary habits.
I usually took the order when Grandma went to sleep. Every time, I texted the deliveryman. “Please do NOT knock on the door. Just put it at the door and text me.” When my order arrived, I quietly walked over to the door, slowly opened it, and tiptoed back to my bedroom. I glutted myself with barbecue delicacies, which seemed so inviting: spiced beef cubes were skewered in a thick bamboo stick, and ambrosial cumin on the beef was fully sent forth when fully grilled. Then, I fell into sweet dreams after giving a belch—a sign announcing my action succeeded.
Indeed, there’s no such thing as a perfect crime, as Sherlock Holmes said. I was caught because of my carelessness: I forgot to take the packing box of the food with me when I left for school one following morning. When I returned for lunch, Grandma asked me if I ordered any food last night. I acknowledged my crime, but she just gently said: “Are you tired of my cuisine, maomao? You won’t be eating my food for long before you go to America.” She used her hometown word for “boy.” Her words dumbed mine in my throat.
I thought I would only eat the usual Chinese fried dishes from then on. But one day after school, when I opened the door, the house was full of a wonderful aroma that did not belong to any food of Grandma’s recipes: I thought there was something wrong with my olfactory nerve. That smell reminded me of the brown sauce from Southeastern Asia: it was pungent and made me pleasant; the smell combined various spices like ginger, onion, and garlic. I walked over to the kitchen and asked Grandma what she made. She couldn’t conceal the delight and coyly told me to see for myself. Until I opened the cover of the pot, I could not believe it was the food that occurred to me: the curry.
Grandma showed off her achievement, proudly saying: “Try how my ‘gala’ is”. I didn’t have the heart to correct Grandma, and I wouldn’t do it ever. Gala? In Chinese, the pronunciation of the word “curry” is actually “gali.” She couldn't even properly name this foreign dish, but successfully cooked it: her curry perfectly combined curry sauce with beef. Grandma’s version of “gala” rice would always be “gali.”
Curry rice made by grandma was simple: without specialized ingredients like coconut milk, ginger root, or basil leaves, the curry sauce was made from flavored powder and onions; the sauce later was braised with my favorite food: beef, potatoes, and carrots. Despite the basic ingredients, it was much better than the one I had in a Thai restaurant. Grandma didn’t know the steps of making authentic curry. She just braised everything together.
How did Grandma know curry and learn to make it? An uneducated rural lady, Grandma did not try any international cuisine until her 60s. She could hardly read, but the characters of my name were among the few she could recognize; she could not use the smartphone fluently, but if any family member sent her an online hong bao in a group chat, she immediately clicked the gold button to open the electronic “red envelope” and asked me to transfer the money to my account. She didn’t even know how to use the transfer function on the app. Grandma seemed to be forgotten by this era of high technology, where people had switched their lifestyle from the actual world to the internet: modern China had implied its science and technology to people’s daily life, such as the emergence of WeChat. However, until now, I haven’t figured out how it is possible that curry could be added to Grandma’s recipe.
When I tasted the luscious curry rice, Grandma asked me if I had determined to go to America for college—this was not the first time she asked this. Grandma supported everything I did, except studying abroad: she didn’t understand the meaning of going to such a far and unfamiliar place. Even though she could not change anything, Grandma respected my choice and always looked forward to witnessing the first college student in the family.
She’d been saying farewell for her whole life: her sons left for Xinjiang, the northwesternmost province in China to work at the age of seventeen. Dad returned ten years later, but my uncle settled there, working in the cotton plantation industry; my aunt was assigned to Xi’an, a city in northern China, doing real estate and settling there afterward. Now, in the latter half of her life, Grandma saw her beloved grandson off to another country located on the other side of the world.
The time approached the day I was going to depart for America. To welcome the coming of my new journey, I dyed my hair caramel a couple of days before leaving. Everyone said the color didn’t match my personal features. However, Grandma always praised my choice in those days. “My maomao now looks so sharp.”
On the morning of my departure day at the airport, Grandma just told me to eat more when away from her. Then, she hugged me and turned around. That hug reminded me of the chilly mornings she dressed me in her arms. The stories of Chinese immortals occurred to me again: they showed up in my brain in fancy robes, telling me to be strong when away from Grandma. At the age of eighteen rather than four, I had received an education and knew that there were no immortals in the world. However, at that moment, I prayed that those omnipotent immortals could keep Grandma safe and healthy forever.
First, I want to express my gratitude to my writing professor Mr. Ryan Chang for his guidance. He's been a gem for me. I also would like to thank my friends (Ting Long, Xingjian Wang, and Peini Yu) for the encouragement during process. Finally, most importantly, I would like to thank my grandma for her commitment to me and my future.
Michael talks about his piece, which was originally published as a stand-alone website.
