by Eddie Huang
Madam Zhu’s put Chinese food in a handsome suit with wide lapels, three buttons, and a vest, but the dressing room never fully took over the dining room. The food wasn’t some sort of goofy kung fu–inspired formal wear or an imperial tuxedo with wizard sleeves and silk lining. Madam Zhu’s recognized that, yes, I am a Chinese restaurant; yes, there are times in life where you have to do business over scallion oil chicken with a suit; but, no, I don’t need a suit that makes me look like Jet Li at Sundance. I am a Chinaman. I have a suit. Please enjoy the view.
—
Right when I was starting to settle into Shanghai and a delightful food coma, Cramer brought me back to Earth.
“FU REN! FU REN!”*7 screamed Cramer.
As his voice rang through the restaurant, waiters, bussers, food runners, and managers spun around. There was chaos. Sound the alarm! There are unsatisfied white people ’round these parts! Simultaneously, three servicemen and -women made their moves toward Cramer. It was a race to the third waypoint, where it would become clear who was in the best position to reach Cramer first. The other two saw that the third, a nice woman with her hair in a bun, would be closest in proximity to satisfying Cramer.
“Man, I love China! It’s the fucking best. You yell ‘FU REN’ and they all come running like roaches!”
Evan already knew. He gave me a poke, a look, and every nonverbal communication known to man, pleading with me to not jump over the table and strangle Cramer like I was Far East Coast Latrell Sprewell.
Think about it. A country welcomes you with open arms. An entire civilization of people look at themselves shamefully, motivate themselves to do better, to make themselves presentable, train their people to be at your beck and call, do their best to gain your respect, but instead of being filled with humbling gratitude that all of this is for you, you toy with them. You yell “FU REN!” like it’s some sort of game, just to see how fast people will run toward you in an effort to serve. Why? For your ego? For a quick laugh? To remind everyone who the fuck you are? We’ll never understand white people, but still we try.
“Hi, meester, yes, I’m sorry, what can I helps you with?” said the waitress.
“Oh, nothing, I just, you know, ha ha. I’m fucking with you. Everything is great. The food is great. We’re having a great time! The service is incredible.”
“OK, good! I am glad you are enjoy it. Let me know if you need anything.”
I was on the verge of losing my shit. I wanted to go all Dad and flip the dinner table because I suddenly felt like everything about Shanghai was fucked. From the opium wars to the stupid duty-free hotel lobby to fucking Cramer. I suddenly felt the urge to exterminate the entire city of these ungrateful foreign roaches. But Corky knew better. He gave me a look, motioned with his hands to calm down, and whispered to me, “Chill, fam….I know.” I didn’t know this guy at all, but something about him said he knew. In times of hate and pain, that’ll hold a madman over.
“Cramer, you wildin’, man,” I said.
“What do you mean? It’s awesome, dude. China’s the best! People bust their ass for anything.”
“You fuckin’ with them, though!”
“Yeah, a little bit, but it’s their job! I’m just having fun with ’em.”
I stared at him for a second and chose to let it go. I knew. Corky knew. Cramer? Left behind. It was the most Chinese thing I’ve ever done: just keep walking.*8 Five thousand years of history isn’t going to stop for Cramer.
Corky picked up the check, Cramer ended up buying me a Häagen Dazs banana split downstairs, and everyone said their goodbyes, but Corky hung around after everyone else left to walk Evan and me to the hotel. We sat on a bench outside the mall for a minute, watching Shanghai go by.
“You good, man?”*9
“Fuck Cramer.”
Corky laughed, then put his hand on my shoulder.
“Yo, it’s light, man. Cramer’s just Cramer. He don’t mean anything. Dude has no idea.”
“It ain’t right, though.”
“Naw, it definitely ain’t right, but what are you gonna do? Get ugly to teach him a lesson? Then you in the wrong.”
“He bought you an ice cream,” Evan chimed in.
“It’s so Chinese how we handled that. The answer to everything is to let people spit on you.”
Evan rose up from the bench outside the mall and declared: “China’s doing its thing now, man. People can laugh at China, but we know what time it is.”
I agreed with Evan. China had been putting its head down, biting its tongue, and waiting its turn for the last hundred years. Anyone who still wanted to laugh at us like we’re still stuck on the opiates had a rapidly approaching expiration date.
“You’re all right, man,” I said to Corky.
“Me?” asked Corky.
“Yeah, you all right.”
“Oh, thank you, da gu,” he said sarcastically.
“Naw, not like that. I didn’t know you, man. I just met you, but you aight, man. Thanks for keepin’ me from flipping the dinner table.”
“Got you, fam.”
“Where you from?” I asked.
“D.C., just like you, homie.”
“Word? D.C. your whole life?”
“D.C., then Beijing for middle school, then back in D.C., then went to Florida like you. Been in Shanghai last few years workin’.”
“Damn, son, you for real one of them third culture kids.”
“I guess so.”
“Proper Shanghainese, ha ha.”
“Naw, Hunan Ren.”
“Stop playin’! Hunan?”
“Yup, Pops is Hunan Ren, so I’m Hunan Ren, just like you.”
“Damn, what up, twin!”
“Let’s get up tomorrow. Get some rest. I’ll pick you up at the hotel, show you around the city.”
“No doubt. Thanks, fam.”
—
The next morning Corky pulled up to my hotel in a S500 with a driver bumpin’ Migos.
“We doin’ it like this?”
“Lao ban steez.*10 You guys hungry?”
“Yeah, man, I stay missin’ the continental breakfast in the morning.”
“Where’s Evan?”
“Oh shit, I think he’s working on Baohaus 2011 taxes upstairs. I’ll call him.”
Baohaus 2011 taxes were a sore spot between Evan and me. It was a problem we both contributed to. For the first two years we owned Baohaus, we didn’t have money for a bookkeeper, so we just put all the receipts and invoices in a box vowing to organize them at some point between tomorrow and the end of civilization as we know it. Of course, we didn’t get to it in time for tax season and had to file for an extension. When we finally did file with the homies at Jackson Hewitt, we got audited because we were a cash business that didn’t have the proper documentation for a lot of transactions. I stuck Evan with getting the paperwork together because I was still cooking at the restaurant while also writing Fresh Off the Boat. Neither of us wanted to deal with it, but since I was the boss, I just told him he had to and of course, he resented it.
I called him from Corky’s car.
“Evan, you wanna come eat?”
“Yeah, but I’m working on the taxes.”
“Ehhh, just work on it later, let’s go hang with Corky.”
“Dude, you’re gonna be up my ass if I don’t finish this.”
“Yeah, you gotta finish before we leave China, but what’s one day? We’re only in Shanghai for a week, you can do it in Chengdu.”
“OK, gimme five minutes.”
The first place Corky took us to was Yang’s, an institution for sin jian bao (pan-fried dumplings), which are to the dumpling canon what Chicago-style deep dish is to pizza. Depending on where you get them, the dough may be thick and closer to the sugar dough used for char siu bao or mantou than it is to a dumpling skin. But sin jian bao done right gives you the best of both worlds, with a bun on top cooked through by the steam and a greasy thick bottom with the crunch of a Giordano’s crust. Some places crea
te a thinner, southern Chinese–style dumpling skin resembling a crispy Lou Malnati’s butter crust, but my preference is a thicker, northern-style dumpling skin, cooked al dente with just enough chew and a firm bottom with a dark sear that resembles the great Dominic Di Fara’s Sicilian slice.
Yang’s had a thinner skin, not much bounciness, but a great sear on the bottom and a generous portion of pork filling resembling a lion’s head meatball bursting with juices. The amount of ginger, rice wine, and scallions was perfect in the filling, and after a couple, I was sprung. In that particular style with a thin skin, Yang’s was tops. I think Yang’s also sets the Guinness world record for proportion of MSG to surface area for a single item of food. After three dumplings, my mouth was dumb dry, and my head was spinning like I had just eaten a spoonful of cinnamon mixed with coffee grounds.
“Damn, son, this shit is O.D. with the MSG.”
“You gonna shit your pants, too.”
“They got laxatives in this pork?”
“I don’t know, but you definitely gonna shit your pants.”
“Is it the oil?” Evan guessed.
“No idea, man. It might just be that there’s so much food in one dumpling, maybe it’s the grease, maybe it got laxatives, nobody knows, but you will catch a Yang’s shit right quick.”
“This is dope, but I could only eat this a few times a year.”
“No doubt. I don’t even really eat Chinese food,” said Corky.
“How you don’t eat Chinese food and you in Shanghai?” I asked.
“I just feel gross after, man. Some restaurants use recycled oil and even if it’s not recycled, it’s still greasy. There’s always MSG. The quality of meat is sus. I’m over it. You gotta eat at chains out here.”
“I don’t know, dude. In Chengdu, we eat on the street. In Shanghai a few years ago, I ate all around the streets. It’s that bad?”
“You live here long enough, you learn not to fuck with street food. You’ll catch one real quick.”
“That just seems crazy, though, to live in China and not eat Chinese food.”
“How long you here?”
“Eight weeks.”
“You’ll see. You holler at me in eight weeks.”
I took a sip of my diet Coke, let it settle, and as I stopped to think about it, something came over me. After a pause, I gave in.
“I’ma have to holler at you in eight minutes ’cause I gotta find a bathroom right now.”
“TOLD YOU!”
—
After a wild public-restroom interlude, we ate again.
Corky didn’t want to eat out of stalls, so he took us to Tim’s, a Cantonese spot from Hong Kong that was Michelin-rated, but just like Madam Zhu’s, I was impressed. Michelin stars or not, the food was at least three emoji flames. Perfect char siu pork just firm enough to keep all the juices intact, dripping with candied lard over a crispy dark brown crust dotted with bits of char. The roast suckling pig was just the same. Perfect slices of pork—firm and supple but forgiving at first bite. The pork projected a veneer of excellence that I found intimidating, yet bite after bite was softer than the last. It was absolutely perfect Cantonese roast pork, but truth be told, the perfection pissed me off.
These motherfuckers had a crystal prawn dish where the prawn was cleaned to the point where there was no hint of red. It was pure white snow in the form of a prawn. It had a snappy, bouncy, satisfying exterior, which made it taste more like lobster than any lobster I’d ever eaten in my life. Using just his skill, this fool was able to turn shrimp into fucking lobster. I thought alchemy in China was relegated to making fake eggs or lions,*11 but, clearly, when the skills were applied in a positive manner the result was transcendent. I was still tight, though.
“This food was made by cyborgs.”
“Or Japanese people,” said Evan.
“Ha, why you mad, though?” asked Corky.
“It’s so consistent. Every bite is the same perfect piece of pork or shrimp-lobster. It’s upsetting. I want to know how this motherfucker did this.”
“You the chef, man. Figure it out.”
“I mean, I’m gonna go home and try, but I’m going to fail a lot before I figure it out.”
“Well, if you can figure it out, then why you so impressed?”
“Because I wouldn’t even have the idea to do this until I saw it. The level of detail on the idea for this shrimp is insane. Your boy ‘Tim’ woke up and was like: I will make Sonic the Hedgehog shrimp that tastes like lobster. This is ALCHEMY. I can’t make tea into coffee or coffee into Kahlua, but this fool can make prawns into lobster. It’s insane.”
Once again, I had to accept that Chinamen looked good in suits and that food really popped against the white backdrop of a tablecloth. And once again it bothered me. Did my constant fear of assimilation and foreign interference come from being a child of the rootless diaspora? I wasn’t sure, but I did what I always did when I found myself falling for an upwardly mobile lifestyle: I ran downstairs.
“Corky, I fux with this. But I need to eat local, b. What up with the local Shanghainese food, homie?”
“Well, we gonna do Fu 1088,” Corky responded.
Fu 1088? At this point, I had to rally the troops. I decided to deliver the monologue of a lifetime, or at least of this visit to Shanghai. I channeled the British Tory in me that resists appropriation, cooptation, gentrification, boutique barbers, artisanal chili oil, ring spun cotton, the dreaded “elevation” of cultural wares, and progress of all types. Whatever happened to wearing a good ol’ made-in-China pre-shrunk tee asking “What’s poppin’, slime?” with hair clippings and chili oil stains? I went in.
“Sure, we gonna do Fu 1088, but that joint got a minimum per head, wild Adobe Flash pop-up windows on the website, and it’ll be with your Converse homies. We need to eat somewhere with fucking landlines, twenty-four K dial up, physical newspapers, and ninjas with Earthlink emails. I’m tryna see Xanga pages, The Sporting News, red-cooked pork, kau fu, stir-fried yellow eels with chives, and other archaic homestyle delights. I wanna see Gremlin keepers behind the register. WE USED TO BE THE STREETS, DOG. WHERE WE AT NOW? WHERE THE LAZY SUSANS? CAN A BROTHER EAT OFF A LAZY SUSAN? THE CHOPSTICKS AIN’T BAMBOO HERE! I NEED SPLINTERS IN MY FINGERS.”
“Aight. Aight! You’re crazy, man. But I got you xiong di….”
We agreed to go to Old Jesse (Lao Ji Shi), which the internet and Corky both told me was the place to go for a proper Shanghainese homestyle meal. There was talk of yellow eels, crab-meat sauce silken tofu, burnt-scallion codfish heads, and, of course, the most famous Shanghainese red-cooked pork in the world. In the meantime, Corky showed me around Shanghai the rest of the day.
We found ourselves at a bootleg DVD store where I bought out their entire collection of John Cusack and Ryan Gosling movies for about $10 total. We brought our DVDs across to the foot massage joint, and had the ill lemon tea, milk toast, guiling gao*12 foot massage man-date, watching the terrible Only God Forgives. Over the course of a week, I had unwittingly become fast friends with Corky and didn’t think twice about having deep personal conversations while someone living at the Chinese poverty line sanded the calluses off my heel. Eventually, I ran out of things to talk about and showed him a picture of Dena.
“She’s not my type, but she’s cute,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I like girls that are mixed race.”
“She’s Italian-Irish.”
“I like half-Asian and something else. My last girl was Asian and French.”
“Hmmm, lemme take a look at her.”
Corky pulled up a photo of his ex on Instagram.
“Yo, that chick follows me on Instagram, b.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, man, she fly.”
“She follows you, though?”
“Yeah, son, she be leaving comments, too.”
Corky was disturbed.
—
Once Corky told me he preferred mixed-r
ace Asian women, I paused. Usually if a friend told me they preferred dating someone of the same race or background, they spoke about family values and shared history. It usually wasn’t a conversation about the physical similarities as much as it was comfort and acceptance or at least assumed understanding. That wasn’t what Corky was talking about. For him, it was a look; Corky wanted banh mi or maybe just a third culture kind of love.
It made me think about why I liked Dena. I guess white girls with pink nipples and tiger stripes were a type that I liked subconsciously? OK, truth be told, it was a type I specifically searched for on xvideos.com, but in real life I kept it wide open. Even in digital life on OKCupid, I started clicking every ethnicity except white when setting my preferences because I knew that whiteness had an unfair advantage in my mind. Since I can remember, I’d been told that white women were superior, even from my Asian parents. If it wasn’t Chinese, please be white. It was a feeling I’d tried to filter out since sixth grade.
In sixth grade, there was a girl named Brooke Something that everyone agreed was the “logo”: blond, tall, skinny, and could undoubtedly call out a pea under a waterbed. Brooke wore her uniform polo buttoned up and proper with long lanky arms slinking out like no. 10 spaghetti. There was always a crowd of people around, and she stood a head taller, gliding across the playground like she was Princess Diana. I never saw her frazzled, never saw her off-center, but then again I never really saw her. She was camera-ready in the sixth grade, giving everyone a glance, a smile, but never really connecting. Brooke kind of just gave the Miss America wave, avoiding any real eye contact. She was everything Nickelodeon told us we were supposed to like, and we did.
But then something happened. A few months into the school year, I was waiting to use the bathroom before class, hopping around on one leg trying to hold it in, when the door opened. Without thinking, I just bumrushed the door and stumbled onto the baddest chick I’d ever seen. I backed up, still squeezing my crotch to keep the ammonia in place, when we locked eyes. Cot damn. There she was, shiny black hair, piercing dark brown eyes, polo shirt tucked in sideways, with her skirt hiked up, lookin’ at me cockeyed. Her name was Lourdes Perez.
She adjusted herself, patted down her skirt, tossed her hair, and made way for me into the latrine. I didn’t move. Paralyzed, my urge to piss faded as I caught the illest boner of my young life. For a moment, I understood sex. It wasn’t about false ideals and pedestals or cupped-hand waving; it was primal, instinctual, and visceral. It grabs you at the bottom of your balls, and it’s undeniable. When it’s right, there’s no type. And now I know why the coquí frog*13 sings….
