The Last Chinese Chef (7 page)

By my seventh year we were starving. The decision was made to sell one of the children. Usually a family would sell a girl, but the girl in our family was the youngest. Too young to sell. I said I would go. It was time for me to be a man.

At least with this move I knew I would eat. There was a reason why families as poor as mine sold their children into the restaurant trade. It was slavery, but it came with hot meals, three times a day. And if the young one proved gifted, there was nothing really to stop him from reaching the top. With food a man could advance on merit alone, without money, lineage, or education.

And thus it was for me. Being sold was my life’s beginning. A broker resold me into the employ of the palace. Never before was there such a place; never will there be again. In those years, the last of Ci Xi’s reign, there were five divisions: meat, vegetarian, cereals — which meant rice, buns, and noodles — snacks, and pastries. An incredible variety of food was brought to the palace, not only game and birds and seafood of all description but also the fruits and vegetables specially chosen at the dedicated farms, each piece plucked from the bottom of the plant, the place closest to the root and thus to life. Tribute came from local officials all over the empire. From the northwest came redolent Hami melons and sweet grapes; from the south, oranges, tangerines, longan, crystal sugar, and litchis. The governor of Shandong sent lotus seeds, dates, dried persimmons, and peanuts. From Liaoning and Manchuria came hawthorn berries and pears. The repertoire of the palace kitchen covered four thousand dishes. The most important creations — those most favored by the imperial family — sometimes became the lifelong concentration of one celebrated cook.

I lived with two other kitchen boys, Peng Changhai and Xie Huangshi, in a small rented room in the Tartar City, a half-hour’s walk from the palace. In this walled enclave that encased the Forbidden City like a larger square lived the Manchus. Relatives of the Emperor and the lords of the Eight Banners, they in turn supported a whole second world of servants, craftspeople, laborers. We, kitchen assistants in our little brick room with its few small windows, were on the bottom of this generally privileged sector of the city.

But at least we were slaves and not eunuchs. Eunuchs could live in the palace. They held unimaginable power. But any man who still had his three precious, his private parts, had to be out by sunset. And so we came here, to the Tartar City, to our small room.

Xie Huangshi was the much younger brother of Eunuch Xie, who directed the Empress Dowager’s exclusive kitchen, which was called the Western Kitchen. Their family had also been poor — once. Then the eldest Xie brother had sat for the knife, and passed into the brilliant, painted world of the Forbidden City. He took control of the kitchens and quickly rose in power. Finally he brought in his baby brother, Xie Huangshi — but as a slave, not a gelding. Eunuch Xie remained outwardly aloof, but everyone knew he favored the boy. He put him under one of the greatest cooks of the palace, Zhang Yongxiang. Zhang knew no limits. His most famous dish involved hollowing out fat mung bean sprouts with wire, then stuffing them with minced seasoned pork and steaming them to delicate perfection. Xie Huangshi trailed him like a shadow, never so much as lifting his arm without trying to do it like the master.

Peng and I went under Tan Zhuanqing. There has been no accident in my life luckier than this. It was not only that Lord Tan was the greatest chef of his generation, as he was; it was that he was a man of great accomplishment. All Manchus were pensioned at birth — Lord Tan used to say that this had been the downfall of the tribe — but even among them Tan Zhuanqing came from an especially wealthy and powerful family. From a young age he was famous for his intellectual attainments. By twenty-six he was a member of the Hanlin Academy. It was said he had written the best eight-legged essay in memory. He knew everything about antiquities and was a sought-after expert on cultural relics. He was an aristocrat. He had money, position. He could have spent his life doing whatever pleased him. And what pleased him was to cook in the palace.

“Why?” I would say. “The Old Buddha takes only a few bites.”

“It is not her. Ten thousand years to her, of course, but she cares only for little cakes that comfort her and carry her back to other times. It’s the princes! Gong, Chun, and Qing — General Director Li Lianying. It is they for whom I cook.”

No more than a small remark, but it was one that made me see how all things fit together. There was a shadow audience for the palace kitchens, a discriminating and highly appreciative one. What happened to the food every day, after every meal, was no accident.

Each time the Empress Dowager entered the hall and ate, she left many dozens of elaborate dishes untouched. We packed these into large lacquer boxes, divided into sections, each box containing a meal for a family of eight, and tied them with hemp. These were carried by eunuchs to the homes of princes and high officials. There they got tips and gifts beyond imagining.

When I went out into the city it was with Tan Zhuanqing. He liked to select his own provisions. Everyone knew him. He was famous. I heard people ask him: Why not leave the palace? Open your own restaurant. And he would always say there could be no higher calling than cooking for the Emperor. He was correct. But behind that truth was another one, which was that he also cooked for the cognoscenti. The gourmet was as important as the chef.
Liang tiao tui zou:
the art walks on two legs. To have one, you must have the other.

I learned from him. Sometimes I saw him come up to a stockpot when he believed no one was looking, and add a secret pinch of something from his pocket. We all saw, we all begged him to say what it was, but I was the only one he would tell. Then of course I told Peng and Xie. We were brothers.

Lord Tan arranged our education. He saw that Peng and Xie and I had gifts, and that meant we had to learn to read. “You must read the food classics,” he said. “No Chinese can call himself a chef without doing so.” We would have thrown ourselves off cliffs for him, done anything, so we worked hard for his tutor. We burned candles until day-break, and in this way the door of words opened. Lord Tan gave us passage to a higher world. There everything had been recorded, the accumulated truth of all things past. I felt myself leaving my old world, in a way, when I learned to read — certainly leaving the limited world of the immediate, which until then was the only world I had ever known. I found that everything I needed had been somewhere known, and somewhere written. Now that in this paradise of food the hunger of my early years had been satisfied, my appetite was for words. I wanted to know all that men had known before.

Yet what I read was not recipes; they were almost never written down. The way of cooking a dish was always secret, and exclusive, and the only way to learn it was by watching. So in my years of study, what I did was watch Lord Tan.

There was the day we prepared a midday meal for the Empress. He was creating his glazed duck. His secret for this dish was full concentration on the primary essence of the food itself. Thus he used duck fat, rendered from another duck, and duck broth, distilled from yet several others. Duck should taste entirely of duck; duck should be used in every way. This is what he taught me. It did not matter if four or five ducks were used to make one. This was the pursuit of perfection. And this was his secret: by doubling and tripling the essence of the duck he was able to reach
nong,
the rich, heady, concentrated flavor and one of the seven peaks of flavor and texture.

He was wiser than any alchemist. His dishes brought him all the glory under heaven. And he did it just as easily from coarse simple food as from rare delicacies. He often said that the best food was simple and homey; it reminded us of when we were young, or felt loved, or were lit up with believing in something. This was why the Empress Dowager always ordered
xiao wo tou,
crude little broom-corn cakes made with chestnut flour, osmanthus, and dates. They reminded her of when the imperial family had fled to the northwest during the Boxer Rebellion. Not that those who fled were heroic, he whispered to us, his young charges — they abandoned their capital. But it was over now, it was past, and she could remember what it had been like to be on the road, in the open air, eating rough corn cakes.

On that day Lord Tan paid close attention to the duck.
Nong
was a quality that could go too far. Timing was all.

But Tan was a master who effortlessly synthesized knowledge. He always knew to remove the duck at its most sublime. When it was time for the meal to be served I went outside and stood in a row with the other apprentices, all of us in our flapping blue robes with white oversleeves. The Empress ate in the Hall of Happiness and Longevity. I could barely see it down the long brick walk. They were setting tables up in there now.

Then came the call. Each of us took a lacquer box on our shoulders and set off in a foot-whispering line. In the hall we laid out the dishes in places chosen by the geomancers and protocol officials of the Western Kitchen. Everything was according to pattern, order, harmony. There were hot and cold dishes, roast fowl, soups, fish fried and steamed and braised, and all manner of sweet and salty northern-style pastries. From the far south came crabs preserved in wine and fresh cold litchi jelly. There was shark’s fin sent by the king of the Philippines, and bird’s nest from the Strait of Malacca.

We set down the plates and withdrew as always. That day we did not return to the Western Kitchen but waited in another hall nearby, empty, wood-dusty, ringing with our footsteps and our chortling jokes. Then we trotted back and packed the food into the dragon-embossed lacquer boxes as usual. We tied them with green and red strings and fixed them to poles.

Yet Old Li, the eunuch who always took my pole, walked up to me and stood there. “Boy,” he said, “you know the Houhai District?”

“Of course, sir,” I said, for I had grown up there.

“Then take this to the Gong family palace. Do you know the road?”

“Like my hand. But honored sir, it is not my place to go there. It is yours.”

“Don’t you think I know that? Curse fate! But it’s urgent. I am being called back. You’ll take it?”

“Yes, honored sir.” Before I had even finished speaking he swung his robes and walked away. His pole was still in my hands.

I shrugged it on. It settled easily into the notch on my shoulder. Prince Gong’s mansion lay near the lake. I knew the spot. I walked toward the back of the palace, for it would be best to leave by the Shen Wu Gate.

Then it was out into the teeming city, my blue and white robes fluttering with importance, the imperial lacquerware bouncing with my steps. People moved out of my way. Crowds parted. I wore the colors of the palace.

At the front gate of the Gong mansion the pole and boxes were recognized at once, though I was not. “Honored lord,” I said to the gatekeeper, “Master Li could not carry these boxes today. I am an unworthy apprentice.”

The gatekeeper called to someone. A gate to the inner gardens opened and a beautiful girl came out with a servant. “Ah! Where’s Uncle Li?”

“He was detained.”

“You came instead?”

“Yes, miss.” I made a reverence.

She put on an amused look and reached into her purse for coins. “What’s inside?” she said.

“Lord Tan made his glazed duck.”

“Ah! Wonderful.” She handed me the coins.

“Pleasure belongs all to me, miss. Thank you.” I closed my fist around them. I bowed low and long, until she and the servant with the food had withdrawn.

Quickly I slipped out to the street. I walked down along the lake with its waving fronds until I was under a pool of yellow light, beneath the buzz and hiss of a gas lamp. Only then did I unfold my hand to look.

Five coins. They looked like —

I bit one. Gold. I had never seen it before, but I knew. I closed my hand tightly again and kept walking, south, away now from the lake.

When I reached Huang Cheng, to return to the palace, I should have turned east. Instead I turned west — toward my family. I would run like light itself. I would be no more than a moment late. Lord Tan would never know.

When I came to my old neighborhood and turned panting around the corner to my own lane, the first thing I saw was my mother sitting outside the doorway on a stool, scrubbing a cabbage. “Zhao Sun,” she said slowly, half stumbling with surprise and wonder. She used my milk name, the name they called me as a baby, which I had not heard for a long, long time. I made an obeisance, but it was stiff. “Liang Wei has returned,” I said, and then she leapt to throw her arms around me.

“Ma,” I said, the single syllable strangling out of my mouth. She was so small! I was tall and strong; I had not realized how much I had grown. My skin was scrubbed, my queue plaited. I stood holding her in what had for a long time seemed to be only my apprentice clothes, but which now shone in this dark alley as brilliant robes of imperial silk.

“Come,” she said, and pulled me quickly in through the low, stooping doorway. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the clay-walled room, my little brother and sister appeared from the shadows, eyes large, barely believing. It was as familiar as a dream: the cracked basin, the faded flowers on the bedding. My mother’s dented pans.

I was glad my father was not there. I had another father now — Tan Zhuanqing. My life was his.

“I can’t stay.” I gave Erhui and Ermo a squeeze. They were thin and not much taller than I remembered them — not flush with good food as I was. “Go outside,” I told them. “Let me talk to Ma.”

When they had slipped out into the sunlight and dropped the quilted cold-weather robe back down behind them, I took her elbow, opened her hand, and dropped in one of the coins. “Do you know what this is?”

“By the Gods,” she said, “yes.” She looked up at me. “Where did you get it?”