Life in My Years

Thirteen years ago, four hours after departing from Shanghai, my dad and I stepped off a rickety train and onto a platform in Nanjing. The air was crowded and dense, heavy with the weight of summer. The sky hung over us like a grey velvet curtain and tall raggedy trees were littered sparsely along the dirt road in an erratic formation, their hot breath occasionally lingering on my cheeks, making me feel warmer than I was already. I looked around and felt restless; after the train, there was still another leg of distance to travel before reaching my grandpa’s house.

He wasn’t my real grandpa, but I was to call him that when I saw him because, according to my dad, he was as good as a father to him and therefore, as good as a grandpa to me.

I could tell my dad was excited to see my Nanjing-grandpa because he’d been so agreeable during the entire train ride, talking and answering all my questions with a chatty graciousness markedly different from his usual curtness: there was a gentle tone of amiability he fell into whenever he was particularly happy or excited about something and it was completely infectious to me back then; I treasured these moods when he was all jokes and smiles, tranquil and light, looking as if a frown had never before crossed his face. We would play games and make each other laugh, and best of all, he would tell me stories.

On the train, he told me about my Nanjing-grandpa. He was once a professor at Nanjing College, and a dear old friend of my real grandpa, who was also a professor, though not in Nanjing. Every summer, starting from when he was very young, my dad would be sent off on a train to Nanjing to spend three months with my Nanjing-grandpa and his family. He loved it there.

Nanjing-grandpa liked my dad because he was a quiet serious boy, and liked to read – qualities absent from Nanjing-grandpa’s three children, rambunctious spirits roughly my dad’s age who regularly tore the house apart.  Amidst the chaos, he would take my dad aside, as young a boy as he was, and the two of them would have long serious talks about life: family, mathematics, philosophy, Shanghai, books. I imagine my dad must’ve learned a lot from those talks and found them immensely enjoyable, if for nothing else but the novelty of being listened to and respected like an adult by an adult when he was only a child.

Later, over a paltry lunch of lightly salted crackers that left pale crumbs in our laps — the only snack we’d thought to bring on the long train ride — my dad told me of how great of a cook Nanjing-grandpa was, how he reigned the kitchen with a swift-handed confidence won from impeccable intuition guided by the most discerning of taste-buds. Real cooks scorned the use of written recipes and measuring utensils, my Nanjing grandpa would say – true cooks know the right type and the correct amount of ingredients by the feel in their fingers, their minds, imaginations.

I’d often heard my dad repeat this same sentiment in different variations when either my mom or I asked him how he made a particular dish that turned out well: “I use the same ingredients that we all use,” he’d say, “it’s just a sense; you can’t explain it,” and he’d grin at us. My mom and I would laugh, or she would laugh and I would roll my eyes.

Smiling a different kind of smile now, he told me what had left the deepest impression about Nanjing-grandpa’s cooking: his spicy cellophane noodles.

“Cellophane noodles?” I asked.

He told me not to underestimate just how much a great cook can transform a plain, simple dish into an extraordinary one.

“Nanjing is where I learned how to eat spicy foods,” he said, “and those spicy noodles are what taught me.”

How much spiciness a tongue and stomach could tolerate always seemed to me to be a point of pride with chinese people – or perhaps it was just my parents who were competing with everyone on this matter much to everyone’s indifference. I recall numerous meals in restaurants with family friends in which plates of spicy foods would be ordered; these dishes would be red from all the peppers and spices on, in, and around the food; the food would radiate. My parents would taste a bite of the pulsating dish and then say nothing; if casual inquiries were made regarding the level of spiciness, they might look up with mild surprise and say something like, “Oh! Was this supposed to be spicy?”

“Nanjing spiciness is different from Szechuan spiciness,” my dad continued. “Szechuan spiciness is a very oily kind of spiciness, but Nanjing spiciness – it’s an entirely different taste.”

“It’s a very clean kind of spiciness; it’s a white kind of hotness. When you know Nanjing spiciness, you know that this is a superior type of spiciness,” he said.

“When he made those noodles, it was that superior spiciness; it was an event. He wouldn’t show anyone how he made it, but he’d finally emerge from the kitchen for dinner, and everyone would sit there, waiting for the main attraction.”

His eyes looked as if he were far away, and he smiled like a man remembering the most delicious memories of summer and youth.

“I remember my very first time eating it. It tasted like nothing I’d ever had before. It practically destroyed my tongue it was so spicy — but it was so good I didn’t even care; his noodles actually inflicted on me physical pain and all I could do was just ask for more, more, more even as my eyes filled with tears.” He laughed. “That’s how good his cooking was.”

I imagined my dad as a little kid, eyes wide open and shining from this epicurean revelation, hunched over the table and shoveling spicy noodles into his mouth as fast as he could with his eyes and nose streaming and I laughed too.

Nanjing-grandpa looked just as I imagined he would look: he was a fairly thin man, and he wore black scholarly-looking glasses on his nose, a woolen grey hat on his head, and a wide smile on his lined face. He and my dad embraced each other, but I felt a little shy, as this was the first time I was meeting him. Nanjing-grandma reminded me of a plump little bird, fluttering around us with attention and careful fuss. She had sharp, intelligent eyes and her hair, pulled back, looked as soft and smooth as a down feathers. I looked at the two of them and thought that they looked like a couple who loved each other and belonged together.

Once settled in, I spent a little time exploring their house and the tiny garden in the back before finally planting myself down in the kitchen where Nanjing-grandma was preparing food for dinner. I could hear the sounds of conversation and laughter coming from the living room, and I slunk stealthily past the living room, peeking in to see where both my dad and Nanjing-grandpa were sitting. I could tell by the way they were both smiling that they were having a wonderful time catching up.

After some time, my dad finally came to tell me it was time for dinner, so we went into the dimly lit kitchen and crowded around the small table filled with steaming food, save one blank spot in the middle. Everyone was chatting when Nanjing-grandpa came out of the kitchen carrying something in his hands, and I immediately saw what dish was to be in that open spot: his spicy cellophane noodles.

My dad exclaimed something loudly and everyone laughed. I think he said something about how he’d just told me that very day how much he remembers that particular dish, and how much he loved it, despite all the physical stress the spiciness of the noodles put a body under. He then described to everyone what he’d told me earlier that day on the train, his first experience eating the dish as a child. Nanjing-grandpa laughed, and looked proud. Everyone got a large helping of the noodles, including me, and we began to eat.

How can I describe the taste of those noodles? I can’t, because it was forgettable. I probably wouldn’t have remembered how they tasted had someone asked me even an hour after that dinner; but I do remember what I felt like as I was eating those forgettable noodles. I became a method actress. It wasn’t an intentional transformation, or even a conscious one, but if I were to stop to think about it, I think I would’ve felt it a necessary one; for something that was so unconscious, it was a remarkably distinct, sharp feeling that something important and precious would be lost otherwise. I felt my dad’s eyes on me, seeing how I reacted, and every body movement, every facial expression I made was to demonstrate to him the validity of his assessment that these were, indeed, mind-blowingly amazing noodles; when I finished my bowl and someone asked if I wanted more, I eagerly nodded, though my tongue was killing me and I was full and my eyes and nose were streaming. My dad laughed and kept saying, “Didn’t I tell you it was delicious? It’s not like anything you’ve ever had right?!” and as he beamed at me, looking so bright and excited, I could only nod vigorously and smile at him. I ate two more bowls after that first one, and spent most of that night awake with a terrible stomachache.