The Last Chinese Chef (4 page)

Those critics called him an outsider even though he was old-school. They didn’t seem to care that he was one of the few still cooking in the traditional way, that all the other top cooks in China were showcasing some modern edge. But he had determined to do what his grandfather had written and his uncles had taught him. He knew cooking well was the best revenge.

“I wish you had invited the female person to meet you,” Tan said.

“Yes, Uncle.” Sam did not argue. In their minds, being single at his age was almost an affront to nature. It was something they felt a duty to correct. He had long ago understood that the best way to love them was to let them interfere. Let them scold him and insist upon meetings with the female relations of their acquaintances. These meetings were at best a waste of time and at worst painful — and not only for him. What he’d quickly realized was that the women didn’t want the introduction any more than he did. They too were there only to appease elder relatives.

Certainly there were beautiful, intelligent Chinese women to be met in the internationalized top layer of Beijing society, but so far Sam had not found the connection he wanted. Part of it was them. For Chinese women who liked foreigners, he was not foreign enough. For those seeking a man who was Chinese, he was too foreign. His status placed him somewhere below all of the above on the instant-desirability scale.

It had not been like that at home in Ohio. There, his dark, high-cheeked face had seemed exotic to women, especially corn-fed girls with athletic strides and sweet smiles. The women here were lovely too, but different, sinuous, cerebral, fine-skinned. They were cultured. He found them fascinating. It was never hard to begin affairs with them. What was hard was to connect.

That, he sensed, was his fault; he wanted a connection that was complete. Here, he could never get over feeling that he was using only half of himself, the Chinese half. Everything from before, from America, now hid unseen. And he wanted to be seen. At home in the West he’d had a similar feeling, only it was the Chinese part of him that lay dormant. He’d had the idea that coming here would change things. No. He was still half.

“You could have talked to the American about the book,” Tan said.

Sam shook his head. “Respectfully, Second Uncle, I don’t see them doing an article about a book that came out in 1925 — oh, and
in Chinese.
”

“You are translating it.”

“It’s not done.”

“You’re no further?” said Jiang.

“I ought to be more hardworking,” Sam said, which was the evasive and Chinese thing to say. Actually it was his father who held up the translation. Now retired from the post office, Liang Yeh spent most of his time in a dark room with books and the things he remembered. Sam couldn’t get him to do his part, which was rendering his own father’s formal, premodern Mandarin into a rough English-and-Chinese mix Sam could understand.

He had not told Tan and Jiang this, preferring to let them admire the old man. To them, Liang Yeh had triumphed. He had made his way to America. He had established a family. They didn’t know that Sam had been largely raised by his mother, the no-nonsense and tireless Judy Liang, née Blumenfeld, while his father was mentally remote. Exile was in the heart, and Liang Yeh carried it with him everywhere. He seemed determined to never let it go. In time exile became his most important aspect, his shadow, closer to him in a way even than his family.

Therefore, when complaints were raised about the slow translation, Sam took the blame. It eased a needy and chronically sad part of him to hear his father praised, and he did whatever he could to leave his uncles’ good opinion intact.

“You will finish it when you can,” said Second Uncle, for though they were hard on him they always forgave him. Tan was walking out of the kitchen now, where he had been fussing with the tea things.

“Uncle, you shouldn’t,” Sam said. “I’ll make tea.”

“No!” Jiang raised a hand. “You sit. We have a special matter.”

“You want to introduce me to another of your relatives,” said Sam.

“Very good!” said Jiang. “My grandniece is coming from Jilin. But that is next month. Younger Born! You tell him.”

“Very well,” Tan said. He set the tray down with ceremony.
His
grandfather had been the great chef Tan Zhuanqing, who had been one of the top cooks in the palace, and whose apprentice had been the young Liang Wei — Sam’s grandfather. Great was the Tan name even now. Tan leaned over his cup and paddled the steam toward him with swollen hands. “Very secret!” he said importantly. “Only a few know! The Chinese Committee for the 2008 Games is going to run its own Games here, an Olympics of culture. They are going to have competitions in Beijing and Kunqu opera, in dance, which is to include martial arts, and in cuisine! Competitions on TV! All China will watch!”

“You see?” said Jiang. “The Liang name will fly to the four directions!”

“You’re getting ahead, Uncle.”

“You are on the audition list!” Tan cried. “We can confirm it!”

Sam felt a twist in his stomach. A great opportunity, but the timing was terrible. His restaurant wasn’t even opening. “Why me?”

“Fool!” Tan raised a hand as if to cuff him. “If we’ve told you one time it’s a hundred! You are in a direct line from Tan Zhuanqing. Your grandfather was trained by him. People eat your dishes and they talk about them all across the city. You have not even opened a restaurant yet, and you are known.”

Sam swallowed. “How many will audition?”

“Ten, for two spots. Two spots for northern cooks on the national team. The rest of the team will be Cantonese, Sichuan, Hunanese, and Shanghainese.”

“What’s the audition?” He felt as if he were clinging to a rope high above the rapids.

“Each candidate will prepare a banquet for the committee. Nephew! You must make a celestial meal for them!”

“Sure,” said Sam. With a lurch he saw the complexity of it. This was not the four or five dishes chefs prepared on those TV contests — this was a banquet. It was the complete symphony, the holy grail of Chinese food art. It required not only great dishes but also concept, shape, subtlety, and narrative force. “Who are the others?”

“Wang Zijian,” said Tan. “Pan Jun. Also Lu Fudong.”

“Right,” said Sam. He knew them. Good chefs.

“Zhan Ming,” said Jiang.

“Yes,” said Sam. “He’s good too.”

“And Yao Weiguo,” said Tan.

“Ah.” Here was his real rival. Yao was exceptionally good. And he did the very thing Sam did not: he came up with something new each time. He improvised. Yao’s way of working was like that of a European or an American. He riffed, cooking in the style of jazz, while Sam remained the old-fashioned formalist. “I’m worried,” he said. “Yao can cook.”

“So can you,” said Jiang, touching his arm. “It does not have to be complicated. The perfect meal is balanced, not ornate. Remember the words of Yuan Mei. ‘Don’t eat with your eyes. Don’t cover the table with dishes, or multiply the courses too much. Bean curd is actually better than bird’s nest.’”

“Those are nice, naturalistic sentiments, Uncle, but don’t you think the people on this panel are going to eat with their eyes?”

“Yes! You are right! And you must impress them. But that is secondary. The true perfection of food is a surprisingly modest thing. It is what is right. There you will find what you seek.”

Sam sighed.
“Zhen bang.”
Great.

 

The next morning Maggie awoke to a tugging fear about whether the clipping she had brought was still in her computer case. She padded out of bed and to the small living room, where she unzipped the case’s side pocket. There it was. A square of newspaper, with a picture of her husband, knocked down, probably dead already, at the scene of the accident. It had been snapped moments after a car driven by an elderly man plowed up onto a sidewalk in San Francisco and killed Matt and two others. There he was. People around him, bending over him. A woman kneeling.

She couldn’t bear to look at it. She just had to make sure that she still had it. She did, so she zipped it away and turned to the day, just beginning. The morning outside was gray-shrouded. The buildings were spires of lead.

She took a taxi to the New World Building, where she rode to the seventeenth floor.

Then she pushed open the door to Calder Hayes and felt herself stepping back into America. Magazines on the reception room table — it looked like an office at home. It had been the same way when she’d come here before with Matt.

“May I help you?” said the receptionist, young, Chinese, smart-looking.

“I’m Maggie McElroy,” she said, and when this drew a blank, she added, “Mrs. Mason.”

“Oh! Hello. Welcome you.”

“Thank you. Is Carey here?”

“Mr. James is in Bangkok today. Please wait a minute.” She pressed a number code into her handset and spoke in a brief, rapid flow of Chinese. She looked up to see Maggie still in front of her and smiled brightly, pointing to the chairs. “Please.”

Maggie sat, pacing her breathing, gathering calm. Soon a small, sturdy woman came pumping out, pushing black glasses up her nose. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “I am Miss Chu.” Her accent was clipped, precise, faintly British.

“Maggie McElroy. The same. Your English is perfect.”

“So-so,” the woman qualified. “I’m very sorry about your husband.” With a frank, sympathetic squeeze she took Maggie’s arm to walk her back down the hall.

In the conference room, Miss Chu handed her a file folder that opened to reveal the claim. Maggie scanned the lines of English and Chinese, which repeated the information Carey had given her. “I think,” Maggie said, “that first we should go see the mother. Immediately. I need her permission to take a sample from the child.”

“You see, though,” said Miss Chu, “right now we do not know where the mother is.”

Maggie felt her eyebrows squeeze together. “Isn’t her address in here?” She pointed to the file.

“That is the grandparents. They are the ones who filed the claim. The child lives with them.”

“Not the mother?”

“No.”

Maggie sat back. “And the mother . . .”

“It is just that right now we do not know where she is,” said Miss Chu.

“Okay.” Back up, Maggie thought. “The main thing is the child, the permission, the sample.”
Though I want to see this woman. I need to see this woman.
“So if the grandparents are the guardians, let’s go to them.”

“But this address is not in Beijing. It is in a town called Shaoxing. It’s in the south.”

Maggie closed her eyes. “Then let’s go there.”

“It’s far.”

“How far?”

“Near Shanghai. The problem is tickets,” said Miss Chu. Her British accent was softened by Mandarin consonants. “One of our biggest holidays is coming, National Day. Everyone will be off work. Everything was sold out long ago.”

“Like Christmas?” said Maggie.

“Yes,” Miss Chu said. “Like that.”

“What about a train?”

“Same problem.”

“Can we drive?”

“Possible. We can hire a car. But it will take too many days.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“I think it is faster to wait. Let me try to get the tickets.” Miss Chu saw that the American had large, thickly lashed eyes and would have been pretty if not for the freckles spattered across her nose and cheekbones, and the excessive, almost masculine point of her chin. She did have unusual hair, though, even for a
laowai,
a dark mass of coiling curls that bounced around her face and softened her angles. Hair and eyes like these were assets, but this foreigner seemed not to care. She wore plain clothes, no jewelry, little makeup. Her hands were knotty. She looked anxious, too. She had reason, thought Miss Chu. “Try to wait a bit,” she said. “I have a lunch later today that might help.”

Lunch? Maggie thought. “All right. I’ll wait.” She didn’t want to wait, she wanted to move. Her
Table
assignment had already bombed. She couldn’t let the DNA test go down the drain too.

“Let us talk after the lunch. Oh — call me Zinnia. That’s my English name.”

“Zinnia,” Maggie repeated. “And your real name is?”

“Chu Zuomin.”

“That’s nice,” said Maggie, “but I’d mangle it. Okay. Zinnia.” She rose. “Here.” She passed across her business card with her cell number circled. “That phone’s on all the time. I’ll be waiting.” She paused on a breath. “By the way, besides Carey, is there anyone else still here, now, who knew my husband?”

“I think no,” said Miss Chu. “Only Carey. He will be back late tomorrow.”

“Tell him I came in,” said Maggie.

On the street she saw herself in a glass window, face shadowed, her steps moving through the Chinese crowd. She heard a beeping from her phone. She took it out. When she got back to the U.S. she would turn it off for a week at least. Zinnia, already? No, a text message from
Table.
She opened it.

How’s everything going? Thinking of you, sending hugs. Sarah.

Guilt tightened around Maggie’s neck. She should answer. She should tell Sarah that the Sam Liang story was off, that his restaurant was not opening and he had canceled. She would send an e-mail or a text message. She stared at her phone screen. She really shouldn’t wait any longer.

First, though, she had to eat. It had been a long time since she left L.A., time in which she’d eaten very little besides the candy corn.

She had brought the apartment’s guidebook. In it she scanned her sector of city restaurants until she found a courtyard house, close by, that served nineteen kinds of dumplings. This sounded good to her, and healthy. She needed to eat. She waved her hand for a taxi.

At the restaurant she was given a table in a lantern-strung court and a menu in English, with pictures. Many of the small creations looked like the Chinese dumplings she’d had at home, though with exotic fillings. Others were fantastical, sculpted creations made to look like miniature durian fruits and white-tipped peonies and plump, fantailed fish with red dots for eyes. Each was a marvel. But she was too hungry for the exotic ones and so she chose a plain dumpling, something substantial, filled with eggplant, cilantro, and dill.