The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  Inside the apartment nothing had changed. There was her computer, her suitcase, which she had left behind these last days in favor of a tote. Down the hall was the bedroom where she'd slept with Matt three years before and which she had—admit it—avoided on this trip, staying at night in the living room until she could barely stand, then feeling her way down the hall in the dark and toppling into bed. In the bathroom hung her one towel. Already she had worn her little groove here.

  She stood for a while, staring through the darkness at the glittering columns of buildings outside, noticing that she felt different for the first time in many months and interested in the change. It was China maybe, the brash thrill in the air, the unmoored freedom of being far away from her life. Yet it was also the pleasure of the days with Sam in Hangzhou. She still had her grief, but it no longer felt lodged in all her cells and fibers. She had assumed she would grow old with grief, that it would become like her face or her walk or her habits of speech. Now she saw that grief too was a thing that could change.

  She turned away from the window and the city. It was time to start work on her piece, even though Sarah had generously told her she did not have to hurry. "Forget your usual deadline," she had said when she called from Los Angeles a few days before. Maggie had explained to her that the competition wouldn't culminate until Sam's banquet on Saturday night, and the article couldn't be filed before it did. "Fine," said Sarah. "Take extra days if you need to. Stay longer. Just get home in time to do your holiday column."

  "Are you kidding? Like I'd miss that one." Maggie was famous for her holiday columns, which were petulant triumphs of grinch humor. She hated the holidays. Holidays were about home, which, as a societal concept, she had never really understood. Each year she took her column in exactly the opposite direction, writing about having Christmas dinners at lunch counters, or waking up in cheap hotels in winter beach towns, or cruising convenience stores to see who else, like her, slipped out that day to buy a six-pack and some chips. "Don't worry," she said to Sarah. "I'll be back for the holiday piece."

  Now it was time to start on Sam Liang. She moved to the couch with a blank pad, a pen, and her notebooks. She had always worked this way. Before she moved to the computer she began by hand, making a web of all her best thoughts and images and ideas and memories. She read through her notebooks and picked out everything that she loved. That was her first cut; she had to love it. If she didn't love it, why would anybody else?

  Then she traced through her jottings to find lines of meaning and pick out moments. When these were repatterned on a fresh page she could usually begin to sense her centerline. Then she would start to write.

  Thoughts tumbled easily through her now, and she quickly filled the page with memories of the Xie family. The truth was she had been happy with them, happy for long stretches, hours. She had managed to forget the darkness and feel like she used to feel—like a friend to her life, engaged. It was Sam, yes, and China, but she had to admit that it was the family, too. They had such a net of connectedness between them. Even though it was not hers, rightly, she felt blessed to have been near it and been bathed in it for a while.

  She took a fresh sheet of paper, wrote Guanxi in the center, and drew a circle around it.

  That was it. Guanxi.

  Then right away she questioned it. Could a column on food really be about the Chinese concept of relationships? But the more she looked at it the more she knew this was the way to write it. Because this was the heart of the cuisine, at least the part Sam had managed to show her. From the family on out, food was at the heart of China's human relationships. It was the basic fulcrum of interaction. All meals were shared. Nothing was ever plated for the individual. She realized this was exactly the opposite from the direction in which Eurocentric cuisine seemed to be moving—toward the small, the stacked, the precious, above all the individual presentation. The very concept of individual presentation was alien here. And that made everything about eating different.

  Food was the code of etiquette and the definer of hierarchy too. Sam had made her see that a meal was food but also a presentation of symbols, suggestions, and references, connecting people not only to one another but to their culture, art, and history.

  She paused. She wasn't sure—did guanxi apply only to the connections between people or to ideas as well? She took a separate sheet of paper and wrote this, her first question for Sam, at the top. Then she set this page aside. They had said goodbye for now; she wasn't going to call him. She wanted to. She found it difficult to get used to being without him. But he needed to work. She would wait.

  The next morning when he woke up Sam thought briefly about how much money he had spent on his cell phone this month, then decided that it didn't matter, because this was Uncle Xie. He punched in his father's number. "Please," he said when Liang Yeh answered. "Won't you come? He's asking for you. You still have time."

  "Do you think I do not want to?" Liang Yeh lashed back. "It is not easy, this thing you say."

  "It's not. I know. It's hard for you."

  "You say you know, but you do not."

  "Well, if you want me to know, write it down. You've always said you would."

  "I already have," said his father.

  "What?"

  "You heard me. You will see! I will send it to you by e-mail."

  "When?" said Sam, thinking, He may have started, but this could take months.

  "Right now," said Liang Yeh. "My computer is on. Is yours?"

  "You already wrote it? You finished it?"

  "Yes," said the old man, and a minute later it appeared in Sam's in-box. He could hardly believe it. He had pushed his father for years to write down what had happened. Sam noticed the size of the file. A long document.

  He saved it and backed it up, and then put it aside to read later. He had to focus on his menu right now.

  It was not just the perfect dishes—and getting those right alone would take all of the next few days—it was the play of the menu itself, its rhythm and its meaning and its layers of reference. On the surface it was a banquet of at least twelve courses, to be staged for the panel on a specific night. It sounded simple, for those were the rules in their entirety. Sam knew, though, that the meal would be judged on so many other levels.

  He needed help. He needed sustenance. So he opened The Last Chinese Chef, to the section on menu.

  ***

  The menu provides the structure and carries the theme and atmosphere of the dinner. The theme can be witty or nostalgic, literary or rustic. It is developed in the meal like a line of music.

  Before beginning, give consideration to opulence. Too much of it is perverse. Yuan Mei said, don't eat with your eyes. But extravagance of some kind or another, whether in ingredients, effort, or talent, belongs in any great meal.

  There is no one structure to a feast. Many forms can be used. Yet there is a classical structure, and this can serve as the chef's foundation: four hors d'oeuvres, and four main courses plus soups; or for larger and more extravagant circumstances, eight and eight.

  The hors d'oeuvres should amuse while they set the theme of the meal and fix its style. Then the main courses. Start with something fried, light, gossamer thin; something to dazzle. Then a soup, rich and thick with seafood. After that an unexpected poultry. Then a light, healthful vegetable, to clarify, then a second soup, different from the first.

  After this you reach the place where the menu goes beyond food to become a dance of the mind. This is where you play with the diner. Here we have dishes of artifice, dishes that come to the table as one thing and turn out to be something else. We might have dishes that flatter the diner's knowledge of painting, poetry, or opera. Or dishes that prompt the creation of poetry at the table. Many things can provoke the intellect, but only if they are fully imagined and boldly carried out.

  To begin the final stage the chef serves a roast duck. Then a third soup, again different. The last course is usually a whole fish. The fish must be so good that even
though the diners are sated they fall upon it with delight. And then, almost with an air of modest apology because the dishes have been so many, a dessert course is served, something contrived of fruits or beans or pureed chestnuts or even rice, which would only now be making its first appearance at the table as a pudding or a mold, or as a thickener in a sweet bean soup. If the chef's skill is great, no matter how grand the meal has been, this too will quickly be eaten.

  ***

  Sam put down the book. Clearly, he was going to need an underlayer. There had to be a unifying principle. The more he thought, the more he wanted it to be something literary.

  What better place to start than with Su Dongpo, the poet? That was what Third Uncle would recommend. He could almost hear the old voice saying it. The pork dish that still carried his name was probably the dish Sam found himself most frequently served when in Hangzhou. When it was right it was perfect in its way, the pork flavor deep and mellow, the fat sweet and soufflé-soft. Simple. The recipe left behind by the poet himself could not have been plainer: a clean pan, the pork, a little water, a low fire, and the willingness to wait. Patience above all. Chefs over the centuries had added the en-hancements of soy sauce, wine, spring onions, and ginger in the initial two hours of simmering, then removed the aromatics and bathed the pork in only its juices for four hours of steaming. Correctly prepared, the dish was a triumph of you er bu ni, to taste of fat without being oily, paired with nong, the dense, meaty, concentrated flavor.

  Sam had been thinking of a variation. Why not make the dish in eight-treasure style, steaming it in a mold the same way one made the sweet rice pudding ba baofan? He could pack the pork in with rice, lily buds, ginkgo nuts, dates, cloud ear, dried tofu ... He could put the braised pork on the bottom, upside down. Keep the fat there. Steam it for four hours. So rich, though, as the rice soaked up the fat; too rich. Maybe he should dislodge the mold slightly, tip it an angle to drain the rendered fat before flipping it over onto a plate.

  This notion came from Sam's American half; no Chinese chef would get rid of the fat. But couldn't he achieve you er bu ni with a lower proportion of fat? He would have to try it, test it, taste it. That meant making the dish at least five or six times before Saturday. He reached for the paper that held his list and added this new task: figure out how to reduce the fat.

  Life in Beijing had changed, after all. Fat had once been a critical part of the local diet, and for good reason. Never in Ohio had he felt anything so bone-cracking cold as the frigid Beijing winter. In earlier times the open-air style of the capital's traditional courtyard homes provided little protection. Heating systems had been localized—the kang, or family bed, built over fire-fed flues, the braziers that defended only parts of rooms against the icy wind from the north. Many people back then had simply worn heavily padded clothing during all their waking hours, inside and out. They loved and needed the fat in their food. Then there were the poor people, who ate mostly cu cha dan fan, crude tea and bland rice. Meat was too expensive to serve as a major source of calories, so they ate fat to fill out their diet. As these shadows of the past had come clear to Sam through his years in the city, he understood more and more why heart-clobberingly fatty dishes like mi fen rou, a lusciously savory steamed mold of rice, lard, and minced pork, had been long-time favorites. But people had central heat now. Even the lowest laborers ate animal protein. It was high time, Sam decided, to drain some of the fat.

  Learning about the food of Beijing had been one of the side pleasures of his four years here. Historically, the capital seemed to have drawn its main culinary influence from the Shandong style. With an emphasis on light, clear flavor and subtle accents such as scallion, this cuisine gave birth to at least one somewhat distant descendant that became well known in the West, wonton soup. When done right, this soup was typical of Shandong style in its clarity and its fresh, natural flavor.

  Yet the cuisine of Beijing was also the cuisine of the imperial court. From the Mongols to the Manchus, successive dynasties brought the flavors of their homelands. Certain rulers, such as the Qianlong Emperor in the eighteenth century, expended considerable energy seeking out great dishes from all corners of the nation, going so far as to travel incognito in order to sample these dishes at their original restaurants and street stalls. Qianlong was even said to have boarded a lake boat poled by a simple woman, and to have paid her to cook for him. Any dish that interested the Emperor was immediately tackled by a team of chefs. In this way the food of every province became part of the palace kitchen. These things Sam had learned from reading The Last Chinese Chef.

  What had happened to food in the decades since his grandfather's book was published also interested him. As Beijing had grown and molted, especially during the building frenzy that began in the early 1990s, the city was awash in migrant labor. Construction could not proceed without it; in this respect China was much like America. But in China the migrants didn't come from other countries; they came from rural areas and remote provinces. As workers from Sichuan flooded in, restaurants, cafés, and stalls opened, and soon Beijingers developed a taste for huajiao, prickly ash, Sichuan peppercorn. It became a hot condiment; everyone had it in their kitchens. Workers from Henan brought their hong men yang rou, stewed lamb; those who came from Gansu brought Lanzhou la mian, Lanzhou-style beef noodles; and from Shaanxi came yang rou pao mo, a soup of lamb and unleavened bread. From the northeast came zhu rou dun fen tiao, stewed pork with pea or potato starch noodles, and suan caifen si, sour cabbage with vermicelli.

  Then there was the food of the far northwest, which was Islamic. In the 1980s, along with the first inroads of privatization, illegal money-changing bloomed. Waves of Uighur migrants from Xinjiang were drawn to Beijing, where they helped revive street-food culture with their signature kebabs and dominated the black market in currency. They also left a lasting stamp on the food of the capital, with their great round wheels of sesame flatbread, their grilled and stir-fried lamb, and their incredibly fragrant Hami melons.

  Sam brought his attention back to the steamed dongpo pork and rice dish he had in mind; yes, he would drain the fat. He knew enough about food now. He had the confidence. When he steamed it and turned it over he'd have a rich, deep brown dome of treasure-studded rice with the pork now on top, cut into the exact squares so important to the dish, the precision of the shape setting off the softness of the flavor.

  Of course he would have to leave at least a thin layer of fat. For the Chinese gourmet, it was everything. It should be light and fragrant, with a xian taste like fresh butter. It should melt on the tongue like a cloud, smooth, ruan, completely tender. Sam knew he would have to make the fat perfect. Before beginning the simmer he would salt-rub the meat to draw out the flavors that were too heavy, and then he'd blanch it several times for clarity.

  He put a stack of CDs on shuffle-play and set to work. He felt happy for the first time since he left Uncle Xie, since he held the papery body to him and felt the stale breath of the dying on his cheek. His uncle was going to go soon, but he would want Sam to cook, to make a great dish like this one. They had said the last goodbye. He put the square of pork on the board and rubbed it with coarse salt.

  Carey was in his office worrying when Maggie called. His mother was in the hospital again back in Connecticut, and she was failing. He had to weigh whether to fly back. It was not the first time. He had flown back several times before. Each time, they had said good-bye, and he had told himself that the next time, even if it looked like the end, he would not return. Still.

  In so many ways Beijing was starting to feel too far away from his old life, from the person he used to be. It was not just his mother, now dying, and his sister and her sons, now in elementary school—it was his friends, too. He was gregarious. People were an asset he had always known how to accumulate. He had made enemies as well—a few—but these were not so much kept as discarded along the way. He had little trouble blocking them from his mind and heart. Carey went out of his way to maintain a positive
picture of himself, and accordingly it was not his practice to look at his dark spots. He covered them with many, many friends. Quite a few lived in America. As he grew older and lived farther away, he should have missed them less, but the opposite happened. He thought of them more. Perhaps it was because his links with his old friends still felt untarnished. He had been a younger man when he knew them, more generous, more true.

  He should move back. This thought came to him often lately, but he never did much. What he had here was far too pleasing. At first Carey had seen only the obvious freedoms, the ones that had made Matt so wild so quickly. In time Carey understood that China would allow a man to re-create himself, from the inside out, as someone new. A foreigner could make of this world what he wanted. For some it was the unimaginable wealth one had in the local economy, for others the success with women. He'd even seen some who came to China as modern ascetics; those were the respectful ones who donned the shabby clothes of the scholar and disappeared into rented rooms in the hutongs, the back lanes, to learn Chinese. Whatever one's dream picture, China, incessantly indulging Westerners even as it did not fundamentally welcome them, provided the frame.

  The trouble was, eventually the dream was over. One woke up. Morosely he fiddled with his phone.

  The receptionist called through to him to say Maggie was here. "Send her back," he said.

  As soon as she walked in, he saw that she looked different. Her eyes had been circled by care and sadness. Now she looked almost glad. "Congratulations," he said. She had every reason to feel good.

  "Thank you. Here are the permissions, signed." She passed the pages across the desk. "I've kept copies. In six more days I'll hear from the lab."