The Last Chinese Chef
Table of Contents
Praise
Books by Nicole Mones
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Acknowledgements
Acclaim for THE LAST CHINESE CHEF
“Crackling with energy and ambition . . . a tantalizing read.”
— Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Crescent
“Using Chinese culinary history, language, and tantalizing descriptions of fine cuisine, Mones shows how food can both nourish the body and the soul.”
— Liane Hanson, National Public Radio Weekend Edition
“Maybe you’re not hungry. Maybe you’ve never considered the imperial heights of Chinese cuisine. Nicole Mones can change that with the flip of a page . . . The Last Chinese Chef brims with vividly rendered meals and stories about the cooks who have created them for centuries.”
— Charlotte Observer
“Outstanding and beautifully written . . . a great story about the discovery of one’s self.”
— Willamette Weekly
“Remarkably, Mones entrances both the serious cook and those of us belonging to the ‘How long do I microwave this?’ school. In her care, the lovingly prepared meal is both a conscious act of culinary craft, meticulously described, and a metaphor for meaningful spiritual exploration. As a wise uncle of Sam’s reflects: ‘Almost anything could be recalled or explored through food.’ ”
— Seattle Times
“You may have had Chinese food; you may think you know it well. However, this novel will transport you into the world of a hidden culinary culture rarely experienced outside China . . . Mones’s characters are genuine. You will care for them so much you won’t want to put the book down until you’ve learned their fate.”
— Northwest Asian Weekly
“An entertaining and erudite novel cleverly interspersed with mouthwatering details on one of the world’s greatest cuisines.”
— Northwest Asian Times
“Mones’s latest achievement appeals not just to devotees of fiction but equally to anyone interested in Chinese cooking, its theory, and its craft.”
— Booklist
“Mones has a subtle touch when portraying growing affection between genuinely nice people . . . Warning: Avoid reading while hungry.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Sumptuous . . . Early in her visit, Maggie scoffs at the idea that ‘food can heal the human heart.’ Mones smartly proves her wrong.”
— Publishers Weekly
Books by Nicole Mones
LOST IN TRANSLATION
A CUP OF LIGHT
THE LAST CHINESE CHEF
First Mariner Books edition 2008
Copyright © 2007 by Nicole Mones
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mones, Nicole.
The last Chinese chef / Nicole Mones.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-618-61966-5
eISBN : 97-8-054-73470-3
ISBN 978-0-547-05373-8 (pbk.)
1. Americans — China — Fiction. 2. Food writers — Fiction. 3. Cookery — Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.O519L37 2007
813’.54 — dc22 2006030469
Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Robert Overholtzer
VB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 -1
The lines on page 269 are from the poems “Summons of the Soul” and “The Great Summons,” in The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets; translated and annotated by David Hawkes (Penguin Books Ltd., 1985). Copyright © David Hawkes, 1985.
Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
1
Apprentices have asked me, what is the most exalted peak of cuisine? Is it the freshest ingredients, the most complex flavors? Is it the rustic, or the rare? It is none of these. The peak is neither eating nor cooking, but the giving and sharing of food. Great food should never be taken alone. What pleasure can a man take in fine cuisine unless he invites cherished friends, counts the days until the banquet, and composes an anticipatory poem for his letter of invitation?
— LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef, pub. Peking, 1925
Maggie McElroy felt her soul spiral away from her in the year following her husband’s death; she felt strange wherever she was. She needed walls to hold her. She could not seem to find an apartment small enough. In the end, she moved to a boat.
First she sold their house. It was understandable. Her friends agreed it was the right thing to do. She scaled down to an apartment, and quickly found it too big; she needed a cell. She found an even smaller place and reduced her possessions further to move into it. Each cycle of obliteration vented a bit of her grief, but underneath she was propelled by the additional belief, springing not from knowledge but from stubborn instinct, that some part of her soul could be called back if she could only clear the way.
At last she found the little boat in its slip in the Marina. As soon as she stepped aboard she knew she wanted to stay there, below, watching the light change, finding peace in the clinking of the lines, ignoring the messages on her cell phone.
There was a purity to the vessel. When she wasn’t working she lay on the bunk. She watched the gangs of sneakered feet flutter by on the dock. She listened to the thrum of wind on canvas, the suck of water against the hulls. She slept on the boat, really slept for the first time since Matt died. She recognized that nothing was left. Looking back later, she saw that if she had not come to this point she would never have been ready for the change that was even then on its way. At the time, though, it seemed foregone, a thing she would have to accept: she would never be connected again.
She stayed by herself. Let’s have dinner. Join us at the movie. Come to this party. Even when she didn’t answer, people forgave her. Strange things were expected from the grieving. Allowances were made. When she did have to give an excuse, she said she was out of town, which was fine, for she often was. She was a food writer. She traveled each month to a different American community for her column. She loved her job, needed it, and had no intention of losing it. Everybody knew this, so she could say sorry, she was gone, goodbye, and then lie back down on her little bunk and continue remembering. People cared for her and she for them — that hadn’t changed. She just didn’t want to see them right now. Her life was different. She had gone away to a far-off country, one they didn’t know about, where all the work was the work of grieving. It was too hard to talk to them. So she stayed alone, her life shrunk to a pinpoint, and slowly, day by day, she found she felt better.
On the September evening that marked the beginning of these events, she was leaving the boat to go out and find a place to eat dinner. It was a few days after her fortieth birthday, which she’d slid past with careful avoidance. She found the parking lot empty, punctuated only by the cries of gulls. As she reached her car she heard her phone ringing.
The sound was muffled. It was deep in her bag. Living on the boat kept her bag overloaded — a small price to pay. She dug, following the green
light that shimmered with each ring. She didn’t answer her phone that often, but she always checked it. There were some calls, from work, from her best friend, Sunny, from her mother, which she never failed to pick up.
When she looked at the screen she felt her brows draw together. This was not a caller she recognized. It was a long string of numbers. She clicked it. “Hello?”
“Maggie? This is Carey James, from Beijing. Do you remember me?”
“Yes.” She went slack with surprise. Matt’s law firm kept an office in Beijing, and Carey was one of its full-time attorneys. Matt had flown over there more than a few times, on business. Maggie’d even gone with him once, three years before. She’d met Carey — tall, elegant, faintly dissipated. Matt had said he was a gifted negotiator. “I remember.”
“Some year,” he said, his manner disintegrating slightly.
“You’re telling me.” She unlocked the car and climbed in.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m surviving.” What was this about? Everything had been over months ago with the firm, even the kindness calls, even the check-ins from Matt’s closest friends here in the L.A. office. She hadn’t heard from any of them lately.
“I’m calling, actually, because I’ve come across something. I really should have seen it before. Unfortunately I didn’t. It’s a legal filing, here in China. It concerns Matt.”
“Matt?”
“Yes,” Carey said. “It’s a claim.”
“What do you mean? What kind?”
Carey drew a breath. She could feel him teetering. “I was hoping there was a chance you might know,” he said.
“Know what? Carey. What kind of claim?”
“Paternity,” he said.
She sat for a long moment. A bell seemed to drop around her, cutting out all sound. She stared through her sea-scummed windshield at the line of palms, the bike path, the mottled sand. “So this person is saying — ”
“She has his child. So I guess you didn’t know anything about this.”
She swallowed. “No. I did not. Did you? Did you know about a child?”
“No,” he said firmly. “Nothing.”
“So what do you think this is?”
“I don’t know, honestly. But I do know one thing: you can’t ignore it. It’s serious. A claim has been filed. Under the new Children’s Rights Treaty, it can be decided right here in China, in a way that’s binding on you. And it is going to be decided, soon.” She heard him turning pages. “In — a little less than three weeks.”
“Then what?”
“Then if the person who filed the claim wins, they get a share of his estate. Excluding the house, of course — the principal residence.”
To this she said nothing. She had sold the house. “Just tell me, Carey. What should I do?”
“There’s only one option. Get a test and prove whether it’s true or false. If it’s false, we can take care of it. If it turns out the other way, that will be different.”
“If it’s true, you mean? How can it be true?”
“You can’t expect me to answer that,” he said.
She was silent.
“The important thing is to get a lab test, now. If I have that in hand before the ruling, I can head it off. Without that, nothing.”
“So go ahead. Get one. I’ll pay the firm to do it.”
“That won’t work,” said Carey. “This matter is already on the calendar with the Ministry of Families, and we’re a law firm. We’d have to do it by bureaucracy — file papers to request permission from the girl’s family, for instance. It would never happen by the deadline. It won’t work for us to do it. But somebody else could get the family’s permission and get the test and let us act on the results. That would be all right.”
“You mean me,” she said.
“I don’t know who else. It’s important, Maggie. We’ll help you. Give you a translator. You can use the company apartment. You still have Matt’s key?”
“I think so.”
“Then get a flight. Come in to the office when you arrive.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Maggie,” he said. “About everything, about Matt. It’s terrible.”
“I know.”
“None of this was supposed to happen.”
She took a long breath. He means Matt, hit by a car on the sidewalk. Killed along with two other people. Random. “I’ve wrestled with that one,” she said. “So this child — ”
“A little girl.”
She closed her eyes. “This girl is how old?”
“Five.”
That meant something would have to have happened six years ago. Maggie scrolled back frantically. It didn’t make sense. They were happy then. “If you’ll give me the months involved I’ll go back through my diaries and see if he was even in China then. I mean, maybe it isn’t even possible. If he wasn’t there — ”
This time Carey cut her off. “Winter of 2002,” he said softly. “I already checked. He was.”
The next morning she was waiting in the hallway when Sarah, her editor, stepped from the elevator.
“What are you doing here?” Sarah said. “You look terrible.”
“I was up all night.”
“Why?”
“Bad news about Matt.”
“Matt?” Sarah’s eyes widened. Matt was dead. There could be no more bad news.
“Someone filed a claim.”
Sarah’s mouth fell open, and then she closed it.
“A paternity claim.”
Sarah went pale. “Paternity! Let’s go inside.” She unlocked the door and steered Maggie to the comfortable chair across from her desk. “Now what is this?”
“A woman filed a claim against him in China, saying she has his child.”
“Are you serious? In China?”
“Yes, and because of the agreements between our two countries, this claim can be ruled on in China and collected from there.”
“Collected,” repeated Sarah.
“Generously,” said Maggie.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go there, right away. I have no choice. I’ve never asked you, in twelve years, not even when Matt died, but now I’m going to need a month off.”
“Please! Doll! We run old columns all the time when someone has an emergency. You’re the only one who’s never asked for that. Don’t even worry about it. And a year ago” — Sarah looked at her, eyes soft with unspent empathy — “I told you to take off. Remember? I practically begged you.”
“I know.” Maggie reached over and clasped her friend’s hand. “The truth is, work kept me going. I needed it. I’ve always been like that. I’m stronger when I’m working. I don’t know how I’d ever have made it through without it.” She looked up. “I’m better lately. Just so you know.”
“Good. By the way, your last check came back.” Sarah showed her the envelope. “Do you have a new address?”
“I got a new P.O. box, one closer to where I’m living.”
“Where are you living?”
“In the Marina,” she said, and left it at that.
Sarah wrote down the new mailing address. “Thanks. Anyway, of course you can go, take a month off, we’ll use an old piece. Don’t even think about it. Maybe it’ll be good for you, actually. You should make the best of it. Recharge.”
Maggie spoke carefully. “Do you feel I need to recharge?”
“No. No, it’s not that, it’s just . . .” Sarah paused, caught between friendship and responsibility. “Lately you don’t seem that excited about food. You must have noticed it too. I don’t get the old sense of wonder.”
I don’t either, Maggie thought sadly. “In which stories did that bother you?”
“Well. The one on the Pennsylvania Dutch. Couldn’t you have found anything charming about them?”
“You’re talking about people whose principal contribution to cuisine is the pretzel. Who make perfect strangers sit at a table and share fried chicken. Whose idea of a vegetable is a slic
ed tomato. And don’t get me started on their pie!”
Sarah smiled. “See, you’re as wonderful as ever. Just go off like that. Let yourself go.”
Maggie laughed.
“And don’t forget that part, too. You always found the happiness in food.”
“I’ll try.”
But now Sarah’s small smile melted, and concern took its place. “Do you think — there’s no possibility this is true, is there?”
“You mean Matt? I have no idea. Did he tell me anything or lead me in any way to think anything? No. He went to China on business sometimes, but so did all the lawyers in his office.”
“You went there with him.”
“I did, once, for a week. Three years ago. Nothing. And you know me. I am watchful. Being attentive is the way I write, and it spills over. I sensed nothing. But this, if it happened, would have been a few years before that. I can’t think like this, Sarah, is the truth; I’ll go crazy. I have to go and get a lab test, and that’s that. Then on from there.”
“It’s going to be a difficult trip,” Sarah said, now as her friend.
Maggie nodded. “And just when I was getting the guy kind of settled in my mind, you know? And in my heart. Plus, to be honest, Sarah, even though it’s necessary and all, it’s not really a good thing for me not to be working, even for one month. I perform better at everything when I’m working.”
“Are you saying you’d rather work?” said Sarah.
“Of course I’d rather work, but I can’t. I have to go there and see to this.”
Now a new smile, different, the impish smile of an idea, was playing on Sarah’s face. “Would you like to work while you’re in China?”
Maggie stared. She wrote only about American food. “How?”
“File a column from there. We can run an old one — I already told you, it’s no problem, you have some classics I’d love to see again — but we also have an assignment in China. It just came in. I can give it to anyone, in which case I’d have to send someone. Or I can give it to you, since you are going, and it can be one of your columns.”