Upgrading my Chinese Placemat Education
Three Books to Celebrate the Chinese New Year
My childhood memories of Nanking restaurant in Brantford, Ontario, are tinged with MSG, Chinese astrology lessons and oddly, Pac-Man. On Sundays, my siblings and I would do battle at the two-player Pac-Man machine at Nanking, our greasy fingers working the joystick to devour Pinky, Blinky, Inky and Clyde. In between ghost-slaying, we’d pack monster mouthfuls of crispy chow mein noodles into our cheeks, each noodle well-dipped in cloying sweet and sour sauce while we awaited our entrees. It was a weekly no-brainer splitzies approach that consisted of very authentic Chinese cuisine: deep-fried wontons with the accompanying day-glo sauce, deep-fried pineapple chicken balls with their equally neon-lit sweet sauce and an egg roll straight out of the hot oil. My mom ordered her go-to almond soo guy and my dad nodded for his usual, a hot open-face roast beef.
Summoned from our Pac-Man duel, our attention turned to the educational placemats where I learned more about my Chinese zodiac animal, the Tiger. I should have had my lucky numbers and Tiger traits memorized given our frequent Nanking visits but sometimes the owners subbed in those (now vintage) cocktail placemats with instructions on how to make Singapore Slings, Pink Ladies and Side Cars.
Thankfully, my Chinese placemat education has expanded to books. In celebration of the Chinese New Year and the Year of the Dragon, here are three books as tempting as a blistered egg roll to sink your teeth into.
Ann Hui
This satiating chronicle is an ambitious cross-Canada Chinese food fix that stretches from Abbotsford, BC, to Fogo Island, Newfoundland, in a Fiat 900. Ann Hui's mission is an endurance test of all sorts. A Fiat is marginally bigger than a take-out box! I couldn't imagine a steady three week-long feed of chow mein but I appreciated Hui's concept and determination to complete her monumental self-imposed project. Hui's true fortune cookie comes in the form of learning about The Legions Cafe, the restaurant her parents owned before she was born. It kept her parents sleepless but steadfast, and explained a lot of the grey shadows that clung to her childhood. Generational history unfolds over ginger beef and of course, chop suey, as she meets the industrious owners of roadside Chinese restaurants---including one located inside a curling rink in Thunder Bay, Ontario and another run by the town's mayor!
If you were to drive across Canada (you can trade in the Fiat for another vehicle!), what would your mission be? To visit every national park? (*Check out Marlis Butcher's Park Bagger: Adventures in the Canadian National Parks.) Tacky roadside attractions? (*Find the blueprint for this trip in Will Ferguson's Beauty Tips from Moosejaw.) From iconic Group of Seven landscapes to ghost towns and lavender fields, it's a neat road trip idea. And, you'll know where to stop for chop suey along the way!
J. Maarten Troost
This zany expose of China served as my preliminary research prior to a Beijing-bound trip in 2016. I'd read Troost's kooky Getting Stoned With Savages and The Sex Lives of Cannibals---he’s no William Hurt Accidental Tourist-type and his time spent in the remote atolls of the equatorial Pacific are proof. His examination of China at ground zero in the fog of lung-collapsing pollution left me panting and pacing.
I was already terrified of China's profound love for karaoke. Reading about a new government mandate to overcome increased rates of childhood obesity by providing waltzing lessons for children made me quiver like a 1980s Jell-O salad. A country that likes to waltz and karaoke—that’s pretty much my nightmare in black and white.
Courtesy of Troost I learned:
"The only four-legged thing they don’t eat in China is a table."
“Death Vans” are the solution to messy firing squads. The mobile execution trucks visit jails, perform injections as necessary and promptly harvests viable organs for transplants.
The swastika symbol is visible everywhere–but it is the Buddhist symbol for love and peace.
China has the world’s highest suicide rate among women (and they do so by swallowing pesticides).
It’s illegal to carry a photo of the Dalai Lama in Tibet.
To corner the market on grain export, Mao ordered the death of every sparrow in China (because they ate grain seeds). He didn’t predict the locust plague and starvation that would follow.
You can buy watermelons the size of oranges.
At the Yuyuan market (which requires a flashlight to visit), one can find tiger paws, mammoth tusks and monkey skeletons.
A typical menu might include fried swan, boiled frog in radish soup and stewed pig lung.
Driving in China is “one long cardiac event.”
While I didn't see any mention of fried swan on menus, there were stewed bats and turtles...and a Sichuan numbing soup that left my tongue in a paralytic state for twenty minutes.
Jan Wong
Jan Wong goes where no mother has gone before by boldly asking her 22-year-old son, Sam, to tag along with her on an edible journey through France, Italy and China with no strings attached (aside from those pesky apron strings).
From Grenache to Gorgonzola and polenta to cannoli, Wong guides hungry readers through the pantries, paddocks and woks behind iconic dishes like panna cotta and Carbonara. Her market crawls read like closed captioning subtitles: the horns, the spitting oil, the exacting textures! For example: “the chef had sliced the fish crosswise, right through the bones, so each mouthful was like eating a pin cushion.” Her visuals sing out when describing the likes of Xiao long bao (“little basket buns”) that resemble “the onion dome on a Russian orthodox church.” Wong takes readers on an immersive shotgun sensory ride of eating river snails with darning needles and eyebrow-raisers like sweet and sour squirrel fish (I won’t spoil this one!).
Her observations are intelligent and peculiar---and come down to the normalcy of a glass of water. Their hosts are collectively startled by the enormous amounts of water Jan and Sam drink on a daily basis. French, Italians and Chinese have historically eschewed water consumption due to the taxing sterilization process that requires precious and scarce firewood. Wine or tea has been a default solution to fuel shortages and deforestation linked to rising population numbers from the Ming Dynasty onward. Historically, most Chinese didn’t have ovens. Instead, a simple stir fry conserved energy and was economical for the tiny cuts of meat it required.
Seamlessly, Wong integrates the paradox of famine to fasting in China. Why are the rich now afraid to eat? She explains the backward result of the Industrial Revolution plan in 1958. Peasants had to surrender and melt down their woks for steel. In fact, they also had to turn in their rice, bowls, kitchen tables, firewood, poultry and livestock and join the similarly stripped rural families in mess halls. “They” (but not them) called it progress. She handles the head-shaking concepts of communism, capitalism, Mao’s one-child policy, the nouveau riche of Shanghai and the migrant worker maids (who serve the nouveau riche) who see their own families but twice a year with grace. Lost in translation moments are peppered throughout in snappy dialogue. Wong’s relationship with Sam sees some hairpin turns as the pressures of travel and being a guest for so many months frays their nerves and balance, as we should all expect.
Tell me about your connection to Chinese restaurants—we all have one, whether it’s childhood-based or an ongoing love affair!