The Last Chinese Chef Mones Nicole

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When does the bamboo flower? A man may wait his lifetime for the answer and still not see it. The bamboo might flower only once in a hundred years. Once it begins, all the bamboo around it will flower too, for hundreds of miles, all over the region. All the bamboo will flower and bear seeds and then die. So it would seem that the bamboo flowering portends disaster. But many are the tales of famine, of men driven mad by starvation, and then suddenly at that moment the bamboo flowers. Bamboo rats gorge on the seeds and overpopulate; the starving people eat them and their lives are saved. Enough seeds work their way into the soil to begin the new plants, and the cycle of man and his food starts again. Thus the time of the bamboo flowering means both the end and the beginning.

— LIANG WEI, The Last Chinese Chef

Later that morning Maggie went into the office to tell Carey she had decided what she wanted to do.

“I ought to have the results in two days, three at most,” she said. “If she’s Matt’s, cooperate fully.”

“There’s nothing else we can do,” said Carey, and Zinnia nodded.

“But if she’s not, if she’s the other guy’s daughter, I want you to help Gao Lan. Zinnia told you, right? About him threatening her?”

“She did,” said Carey. “I still say that has nothing to do with you.”

“She’s afraid of him,” Maggie countered. “More than she should be, I think, but she is. She’s taken that fear in. She’s holding it dear.” Like I did, with my grief, all last year. “She can’t approach him. Somebody needs to intervene.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“You telling him what’s up with his responsibilities, that’s what. Only a man can do it. And a lawyer. In twenty minutes you could talk some sense into his head.”

“I’m still not sure it’s our province.”

“If I pay you by the hour and ask you to do it, will it be our province?”

He raised his hands. “Okay. I get it. Okay.”

She and Zinnia traded glances of satisfaction.

“But get the test back. Okay? Call me. Call anytime.” Then he gave his wicked smile. “Because as you know I’m up until all hours.”

At lunchtime Maggie stopped at a Chongqing-style Sichuan restaurant, and ordered savory, chewy strips of eel fillet cooked with pungent shreds of pepper and soft whole braised garlic cloves. As soon as she tasted it she knew she would not be able to stop eating it, and so she continued to pluck up the succulent bits until she had eaten most of what was on the plate. While she ate, she let her mind go. She thought about what had been wrong in her life, what had been right. Matt had been right. She still felt that way, even now, after Gao Lan. So he had slipped. She also knew he must have suffered for it. Nothing burdened Matt more than a confession unmade. Poor soul. She suddenly wished that he had told her while he was alive so she could have forgiven him. She would have forgiven him, just as she forgave him now. Their love had been greater than one mistake.

She remembered the day a month or two before he died when they were both getting ready to leave again on their trips. Usually they looked forward to their travel. On this day, though, she woke up knowing that she did not want to be away from him. She did not feel the customary pull to her freedom, to their separation, to a quiet, private house or a hotel room. She wished they could both stay home.

There were no presentiments. She had not the remotest inkling of the fate that would take him a few weeks later. She only knew at that moment that she loved him differently, that she did not want him to leave. She thought about this as she ate the bag of candy corn he’d left for her on the bureau.

That night she knocked on Sam’s red gate precisely at six and over the wall heard the now-familiar phit-phit of his cloth shoes as he crossed the court to open it. She saw the anxious sheen of sweat on his cheekbones.

“Big night,” she said softly. His apron was already marked, and sweat was gathering on his T-shirt underneath. She wanted to hug him, just a quick squeeze of sustenance, but she stood her ground and let her support show in her eyes. It would not be right to step across that line and put her arms around him. Nothing should upset his equilibrium tonight. Besides, she was doing a story on him. And she still had that last, all-important paragraph left to write, the one about tonight.

“We’re on schedule, at least.”

“I’m glad.” They walked around the screen and she noticed her spiral evergreen, appealingly placed near a small stone table with four stone stools. She felt a surge of warmth. “I know it’s going to be great. I can feel it.”

“Your lips to my kitchen gods.” They walked up the porch steps to the dining room, and he pulled back the door for her.

“I keep thinking about your father,” she said, “that he came. Is he going to come up to Beijing now?”

“He says he will. He may get here tonight. We’re not sure. Everybody’s so sick with sadness about Xie.”

“I hope you can set it aside.”

“We’re trying.”

“Does he like being back, your father?”

“He loves it! You should have heard him go on. How the Zhejiang Food and Restaurant Association met him with flowers — just because he was a Liang. I told him he deserved it. Look what I did in here.”

She followed him across the dining room, lit with silk lotus-shaped lamps, set with one exquisite table for the panel. “Beautiful,” she said. The room was not bare, as it had been before, but warm with purpose. There were enormous candles in tall stands, which she knew he would light later. Divans were built into the walls. Doors closed off small private rooms. The outside world had fallen away. She had the strange sense that they could be standing here at almost any time in history.

The kitchen was different from the serene dining room, shouting, chaotic. On every surface were bowls and baskets and plates of fresh ingredients, every sort of vegetable and herb and paste, chopped and minced and mixed. There were freshly killed chickens and ducks. One of Sam’s old uncles — these were the other two, the ones she had not met — groomed one of the birds, turning the warm, fresh carcass around in his lap.

“Do you know my Second Uncle Tan?” Sam said.

“Ni hao.” Tan dipped his head.

“And this is Jiang, First Uncle,” said Sam.

“Hello.”

“The writer!” said Jiang in English. “Very good. Come in!”

“I’m only going to watch,” she said. “And please know I’m sorry for your loss.” Sam translated this, and both uncles thanked her. “They’re your assistants?” she said to Sam.

“Each chef is actually allowed three assistants. I’m using only two. As you know, my Third Uncle couldn’t travel. These two have been terrific.”

“I’m sure,” she said, and surveyed the room, the brilliant sheaves of chives and greens and shoots, pale mounds of cabbage, glistening white bricks of tofu. A blue-and-white bowl held raw fish heads, pink flesh, silver skin, brilliant shiny eyes. Oh, the soup, she thought, excitement picking up. From Hangzhou.

Sam was packing a round mold in front of her. In the bottom went a geometric slab of dark-brown braised pork, upside down on its fat and skin. Around the pork he pressed rice mixed with ginkgo nuts, dates, lotus buds, silver fungus, pine nuts.

“Eight-treasure dongpo pork,” he said. “My version of a classic.” He pressed foil around it, whip-tight. “I’m going to steam it two hours. The brown sauce suffuses everything. I am going to drain off some of the fat before I serve it, though — and you wait. You’ll see. We’ll have an argument over it.”

Across the room Tan had finished with the chicken and was now preparing to carve vegetables, turnips and large, pale daikon radishes. “He’s great with a knife,” Sam said, looking at his uncle. “He taught me. Now watch this.”

Sam picked up Tan’s warm, fresh chicken and positioned it on his chopping block. He applied a small, sharp knife to the rim of the chicken’s body cavity, working his way in. He separated the skin from the carcass with love, one millimeter at a time, teasing the two apart without creating the slightest nick or tear. She barely breathed. In a minute he had the entire skin off the chicken, in one piece, and he held it up, grinning.

“Oh, bravo,” she said.

“How about it?” He was proud of himself.

“You should have been a surgeon.”

“No! I should have been this, just what I am. Okay. We call this the chicken’s pajamas.” He laid it aside. “You watch. You’re going to see it later.”

“Can they take the skin off like that?” She looked at the uncles.

“No,” Sam said. “They can’t do it. Neither of them. Not many chefs can. You have to be able to feel it.” He switched to Chinese and shouted something to Uncle Jiang, who was at the next station mincing ingredients Sam would combine to stuff into the chicken skin: cabbage, exotic dried mushrooms, tofu skins, chives, and minced salt-cured ham from Yunnan.

“You should add rice to the stuffing,” Jiang said in Chinese.

“No,” Sam insisted. “No rice until the end.” Because then there would be the glutinous rice in the pork mold, profound with the rich mahogany sauce and its eight treasures, and the dongpo pork itself. That was rice enough.

Maggie could not understand these bursts of Chinese, but she could see Sam’s Second Uncle Tan get up on the other side of the kitchen and move to lift the cover off a large stoneware crock. He hefted this and tipped it to fill a cup, which he then drained, quickly.

“Xiao Tan,” Jiang reproved him.

Tan raised his hand. He didn’t want to hear it. “My old heart,” he protested.

“Mine too! How do you think I feel, with Little Xie gone from this world! The same as you. I burn inside. But right now we need our wits. We must help Nephew.”

“I have my wits,” Tan grumbled, but he capped off the jug and returned to his vegetables. He was ruddy, glowing, visibly happier for his drink. Maggie watched it all.

Sam watched it too. “Tan’s been up half the night,” he explained. “My father called him and woke him up the second it happened.”

“So hard for them. And you.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

But she could still feel unease in the air. Sam and Jiang didn’t like Tan’s drinking. It would be better for her to get out of the kitchen and take a walk before the panel came. “Do you mind if I look around?”

“Go,” said Sam. “Go anywhere.”

So she slid off her chair. Sam was bent over his cooking. She traded nods and smiles with the uncles and pushed open the heavy door. She liked how hard it was to push. She liked some things heavy, a fire poker, bedcovers, keys on a piano. Matt had been heavy, much larger than she. A protective weight on top of her.

In the dining room, the standing wood lamps made pools of light against the pitch of the fitted rafters and the black tile floors. Tall windows were cranked open to the courtyard, where garden lights glowed among the potted flowers and wood filigree.

She peeked into the small private rooms. Two had round tables and chairs. One had a piano. A piano! The sight of one always brought back the warm feeling of her mother’s apartment. She wondered if it was in tune.

She walked across the courtyard. The light was starting to fail. The second dining room was here. This one was done differently, with white walls and contemporary art, and also doors to private rooms.

She looked into the smallest, north-facing room. It had not been restored. This was where he had lived while the place was being done. The high wooden ceiling was weathered, its paint half flaked off. The walls were seamed with cracks. Black-and-white subway tile, pieces of which were missing, covered the floor.

She turned out the light and crossed to the last, south-facing room. This was where he lived now. It was a warm room; it contained a life. The bed was rumpled. A laptop blinked on the table. Clothing lay in folded stacks beneath the window.

He had said to go anywhere, but here she was intruding. This was his private place. She did not enter, just stood in the doorway and looked.

Like the other rooms, this one had high rear windows. They were screened and hung open on chains. Through them she could see patches of rooftops and sky.

She leaned on the door frame. It was comfortable. There was a stillness to China in unexpected places, and once again she had the curious sensation of being anywhere in time. She felt relieved of her life, of the world she knew, stripped away from herself. It was a strange place, far from her home. She really didn’t belong. So why did the surprise thought keep rising like a bubble inside her that it might be nice to stay?

She backed out of Sam Liang’s room. As she crossed on the path she could hear the Chinese voices from the kitchen. The interplay of sounds was like abstract music to her. When she pushed open the door to the kitchen she saw that Jiang was disagreeing with Sam about something. Tan was off by himself carving furiously. He already had made birds and animals. He looked slightly melted.

“Perfect timing,” Sam said to her. “They’ll be here soon.”

“Were you arguing with him?” she said when Jiang turned back to his task.

“He thought I was using too many crabs.”

“Is there such a thing? Ever?”

He laughed.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, triumphant. “What’s the dish?”

“Spongy tofu. It’s a simple, plain dish — but the sky-high imperial version. The thing about tofu is, if you boil it rapidly for thirty minutes it will fill with holes. It becomes a sponge, ready to squirt its sauce when you bite into it. Now the average kitchen might dress it with green onion and oyster sauce. You know, whatever. Not me. I am making a reduction sauce from thirty crabs.”

“But that sounds great!”

“And not even their meat. Their shells, their fat, and their roe. Reduced and thickened until it’s just thick enough to soak into the tofu and stay there. Until you bite into it. This is a dish of artifice. See? It comes to the table looking like one thing. Like the plainest of food. Tofu. But you taste it and it’s something different.”

“Don’t listen to them. Do it.”

Sam stopped and turned his head to a sound, the gate. A knock. It was the smallest of sounds by the time it got all the way back to the kitchen, but this was his home and he knew that small sound by heart. “First Uncle! They’re here.”

“Oh!” Jiang yanked off his apron and brushed his pants, anxious suddenly, fussy.

“You’re fine,” said Sam. “Go.”

Maggie held the heavy door and watched him pause to light the candles and switch on more lamps to illuminate the couplets of calligraphy around the walls. Then he hurried out to the gate.

“How many judges are there?” she asked Sam.

“Six. All food people, from the Ministry of Culture and the Beijing Restaurant Association.”

“Here they come.” She peeked through the door.

Sam put his knife down and came over to stand next to her and look through the crack. The panel filed in, all men, with one senior member, all in dark suits, smiling, First Uncle welcoming them. It was right for him to be the one to do it; he was the eldest. Once he had them settled in their seats around tiny dishes of pickles and salt-roasted fava beans, he poured a rare aromatic oolong while he delivered a sparkling little introduction to Liang family cuisine.

“Now!” he hissed as he swept back into the kitchen. “Are you ready?” But Sam already had the first appetizers laid out. After an interval for the diners to relax, Jiang carried out a mince of wild herbs and dried tofu, sweet-savory puffs of gluten, and pureed scented hyacinth beans. He came back for the fragrant vinegar duck, spattered with brown Shanxi vinegar. The last appetizer was fresh clams, marinated in a dense bath of soy, vinegar, and aromatics. “That’s nong,” he said, bringing the sauce close to her to smell. “The dark, concentrated flavor.”

A shimmering interval of eating and happy laughter floated by in the dining room. Appetizers were consumed, along with tea and the first toasts of wine.

Sam himself carried in the first main courses. According to the classical pattern he started with a few lacy-crisp deep-fried dishes: pepper-salt eel fillets like translucent little tiles, similar to those his father had described making for the mother and son in the swamp; and an aromatic stir-fry of yellow chives studded with tiny, delicate fried oysters.

Back in the kitchen, he stir-fried tender mustard greens with wide, flat tofu-skin noodles and plump, fresh, braised young soybeans. These glistened on the platter in a light crystal sauce. After that there were lamb skewers, delectably grilled and crusted with sesame.

On the other side of the kitchen Sam noticed Second Uncle looking distinctly glossy as he bent over his knife. Too much to drink. It was bad enough that he was using a knife to carve vegetables; he had to be kept away from food. Sam and Jiang would need to do everything by themselves. Could they?

“When is Baba getting to Beijing?” Sam asked in Chinese, loud enough for only Jiang to hear.

Jiang understood; he sent the smallest look in Tan’s direction. “Actually, he is here.”

Sam jerked around. “Already here?”

“He came a few hours ago.”

“Why didn’t he call?”

His eldest uncle regarded him patiently. “This is your night.”

Sam understood, but still — to stay away from his childhood home? “Where is he?”

“At Yang’s house. Not far from here.”

“We may need him,” said Sam.

“We may,” Jiang agreed. “But let us wait. Do you know, it was always difficult for your father to be his father’s son. He was never the original one or the real one, only the son. He knows well that you have been here alone for four years, with us. He wants you to win tonight the same way.” Jiang raised a white eyebrow. “I agree with him.”

“Unless we need him,” Sam qualified.

By now there was a palpable surge of success from the dining room, the sound of pleased conversation, laughter, delight, comprehensible in any language. Everyone in the kitchen was smiling, Jiang, Sam, even Tan, still on the side carving daikons.

Sam signaled Jiang that there would now be a pause. Shaoxing wine was to be served, thick, aromatic, in tiny stoneware cups. Uncle Jiang poured it from the large crock into the smaller, more precious one that would be borne to the table; it was inscribed with the words of the ninth-century poet Po Chu-I, What could I do to ease a rustic heart? Sam had planned every small thing this way, to support the theme of the meal. He positioned the jug with its words on the tray. He hoped the diners would have their own rustic thoughts. Perhaps they would be reminded of the words of Confucius — With coarse grain to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow: I still have joy in the midst of these things.

When the tray was ready Jiang closed the wine crock and stowed it high in the cupboard, out of reach. “I saw that!” said Tan.

“I hope so!” Jiang shot back.

While they were drinking and toasting the dishes at the table Sam took the next course from the oven, a perfect plump chicken, roasted to a crisp honey brown. No, she thought, not a chicken — this was the chicken skin. “Is there any chicken inside?”

“None,” he said. “Minced vegetables and ham. You cut it like a pie. Here we enter the part of the menu which toys with the mind. You see one thing, you taste something else. This is supposed to wake you up, make you realize you’ve been daydreaming. You know what I mean?”

“I feel that way all the time here,” she said. “Seems like my whole life before I came to China was a daydream.”

“Wo yiyang,” Sam said, Me too. He turned to Jiang and Tan, who had magically risen from his corner and joined them at the center island. The three of them quickly created a monumental platter by settling the whole crisp chicken on a papery bed of fried spinach next to a pearly white woman in flowing robes carved from daikon, her lips and eyes brightened with food coloring, her hands spread in universal kindness. This provocative creation was borne out, thwacked open, and shouted over by the diners. In the kitchen, Sam lifted the steamer to check the ribs in lotus leaves. Almost time.

Behind them they heard a cry. Maggie turned and saw Tan’s hand raised, the clutch of his other fist not quite hiding a little up-rush of blood. He had cut himself. She grabbed a clean towel and leapt to him, applying pressure.

“Thanks, Maggie,” Sam said, and then to Jiang, in Chinese, “Let’s go to the soup.”

This he assembled in an enormous blue-and-white tureen — the intense, delectable fish broth, the fish balls like fresh clouds, the silky tofu, the mustard greens. The great bowl was too heavy for Jiang.

“I’ll take this one,” said Sam, hoisting it.

When he walked into the dining room with the soup there rose a general murmur of approval which escalated to a cheer. He told them the soup was a tribute to Hangzhou.

Then they were ready for the tofu with crab sauce. Tan’s finger had stopped bleeding and been bandaged, so Maggie came over to watch. Sam reduced the sauce and then thickened it with emulsified crab fat and crab roe. Just enough, he said to her, so it would penetrate the tofu and stay there.

When it was right he dropped in the slices of spongy tofu, immersing them. “This cooks on low. The tofu will drink up all the sauce. It looks like tofu — a peasant dish — when it comes to the table. Then the crab squirts out when you bite into it. So good. Here — try. This is what they will taste.” He took a spoonful and dropped it in a small clean dish, which he held up and tipped to her lips. “Go on.”

She opened and let him pour it into her mouth. It was crab flavor multiplied further than she had ever thought possible. “What is that? I never tasted crab flavor so intense.”

“The shells are the secret,” he said. “The part most people throw away. It’s almost ready.” He stood over the tofu, monitoring it. “Now! Let’s go.”

He took the rustic-looking platter he had selected and piled it on. Yuan Mei said nothing was more sophisticated than the simplest bowls and plates. This platter said “plain food.” It completed the illusion — all of which would be shattered when the diner bit into the crab sauce. This, he thought, might be his best dish.

“Ready?” said Jiang, and he took the platter and bore it toward the door. Just at that moment Tan rose from his chair, lost his footing, and stumbled backward into Jiang.

The platter flew from First Uncle’s hands. They all saw. But nothing could stop it from arcing through the air and shattering on the floor. Big, powdery shards of smashed porcelain came to rest in the tofu and crab sauce.

They all stood staring in a circle around it.

Sam was heaving. The thirty crabs. The glory of the taste.

“Who moved this chair?” Uncle Tan glared. “Nephew? Was it you? It wasn’t there before.”

Sam ignored him, turned to Jiang. He was drained of color. “Now we’re short one,” he said.

Jiang nodded. “I’ll call your father.”

“I’ll do it,” said Sam.

“Nephew,” Tan persisted drunkenly, “did you move it?”

Sam just looked at him. He knew when to raise the barriers so he could keep going, and this was one of those times. He turned away. As he thumbed Liang Yeh’s number into his phone, from the corner of his eye he saw Maggie step over to Uncle Tan and put her hands on his shoulders. On the other end of the line the phone was ringing.

“You should sit down and take a rest and let us clean this up,” he heard her say. “And don’t say another word to Sam right now.” She gently pushed him down into a chair.

In his half-lubricated state a foreign woman coming at him and then actually touching him was too much; he did exactly what she said and sank into the chair, mute. “Wei?” Sam heard Liang Yeh say on the other end.

“Wei,” said Sam. “Dad. I need you. Please come right now.”

“My son, this is — ”

“Now,” Sam cut in. “I mean it. Please.”

“Wh — ”

“We’ve had an accident.”

Quiet. He heard small faraway sounds. “Right away I will come,” Liang Yeh said.

It was only a few minutes until he arrived, a small older man, stepping quietly in through the back kitchen door.

Tan looked up at him dumbly. “How did you get in?”

“No matter how far a man may travel, he still knows how to return to his native place,” joked Liang Yeh.

“Baba,” Sam said, and the two walked to each other. Sam held his father for a long time. He could feel Maggie watching, unable to take her eyes away. This is me. Take a look. He comes with me. They stepped apart and he introduced her.

“Hi,” she said, smiling up at him. She was on the floor, wiping up the last of the crab.

She had insisted on doing it while she kept an eye on Tan. Sam was grateful.

He led his father to the cooking area, explaining, and gave him a taste of the crab sauce that had just been lost. “Wonderful,” Liang Yeh whispered, his eyes wide, his face split in awe. It was a look Sam didn’t think he’d ever seen on his father’s face before. “How many crabs?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty!” Liang Yeh’s gray eyebrows shot up. “Magnificent! I love crabs.”

“‘As far as crabs are concerned,’” Tan intoned, “‘my mind is addicted to them, my mouth enjoys the taste of them, and never for a single day in my life have I forgotten about them.’”

“You’re drunk,” Liang Yeh said.

“But accurate,” Jiang said. “That’s Li Yu, 1650. Word for word.”

“Still drunk. Old friend.” And Liang Yeh embraced Tan, who cried a little on his shoulder, and then Jiang, who squeezed him in a tall, quiet way. They had greeted each other a few hours before, but still seemed overcome by being together — old now, but together.

“Gentlemen,” said Sam, “I need another dish. Fast.”

But Liang Yeh was on his own time, as always. Now he was looking at the white woman over there with her rump up in the air, cleaning the floor. “Is she — ,” he said.

“No, Baba. Just a friend. Actually she’s interviewing me for a magazine. So only sort of a friend. A colleague.”

“Sort of,” repeated Liang Yeh. “She doesn’t talk?”

“No. But you speak English, last time I checked. Now come on. A dish.”

“All right.” Reluctantly he tore himself away from the natural speculations arising from the sight of Maggie on Sam’s floor. “Where are you?”

“Here. See the menu?” Sam pointed to a spot on the page.

“The spongy tofu,” said his father. “What else can you tell me about the room, the poems, the serving pieces?”

“There is the couplet on the wall,” said Sam. “It’s something we chose from Su Dongpo, a poem about taking a boat down the Grand Canal. Uncle Jiang did the calligraphy. It says:

“The sound of chopping fish comes from the bow
And the fragrance of cooking rice from the stern.”

“Good,” said Liang Yeh. “Let me see through into the dining room.” He moved to the door and peered through the crack. “Ah! You have made it beautiful.”

“I’m sure I could have done a better job,” said Sam, knowing that he couldn’t have, but using the automatic modesty that came with Chinese.

Sam was startled when he realized they were speaking Chinese. His father had not spoken it much during Sam’s childhood, sticking stubbornly with his simplified English and thus allowing himself to be simplified before the world. No wonder you retreated. Now the deep-throated, rrr-inflected Mandarin of Beijing had settled back over his father. “You can talk, too,” he said to Sam approvingly.

“Still learning. I’ll show you the house later. I did over everything except the little north-facing room. That’s where I lived while they were doing it. But it’s not what you remember, Baba. It’s just one court.”

“This was my mother’s court,” said Liang Yeh softly, “Chao Jing.” And Sam saw the rain gathering in his eyes. “This was her main living area. She had her bed over there.” And he pointed to the private rooms. “All right.” He stepped away from the door. “Go on. Other serving pieces?”

“We brought out the Shaoxing wine in the ‘rustic heart’ jug — you know the one?” said Sam.

“So well! It was my father’s.” Liang Yeh followed him back to the cooking area, picked up the menu, and studied it. “The spongy tofu was your second artifice dish.”

“Yes. The first was the whole crisp chicken skin, stuffed with other things.”

“Then you lost one artifice dish. We need something intellectual,” said Liang.

“Or historical,” said Sam. He switched into English. Chinese was for allusion, English for precision. He was in another realm with his father now that he could speak both. It shifted everything between them. “See, nostalgia is powerful here right now because of how fast things have changed. Anything that really nails the recherché is automatically provocative; it unleashes a whole torrent of ideas in people’s minds.”

“All right.” His father paced the counters, scanned the ingredients. “Can you buy me a little time?” They were still in English. “Serve something else?”

“The lotus-leaf pork ribs,” said Sam. “Uncle Xie’s recipe. They’re ready.”

His father turned. “He taught you? Go ahead, then.”

By the time Sam had served the ribs and chatted with the diners and come back, Liang Yeh had something under way. Sam watched him working with chestnut flour and cornmeal, mincing pork. He did it so easily. Why did you hold back all those years? Why wouldn’t you cook? Was the fear worth it?

“You don’t need this pork, do you?”

“No,” Sam said. “It’s from the top of the ribs.”

“Never waste food,” said Liang Yeh.

Jiang gave a chirp of laughter from where he stood, cutting, but Sam did not laugh. He took a deep breath in, loving it. It was home, being in the kitchen beside his father. It was the root of his chord, even though he had never heard it played before. “Yes, Baba,” he said, obedient. Don’t waste food.

His father made three cold vegetable dishes, one of macerated bite-sized cucumber spears shot through with sauce, and another of air-thin slices of pink watermelon radish in a light dressing. Braised soybeans — those left over from yesterday’s prep — had been dressed with the torn leaves of the Chinese toon tree.

Then the meat and the cakes. First he marinated the minced pork. While it soaked he worked with the wheat flour and a little fat until he had just the weight he wanted, then formed the dough into balls that he rolled in sesame. The next step was to add minced water chestnuts to the pork and fry it quickly on a griddle with garlic and ginger and green onion and soy until it was deep brown and chewy-soft. Then he held another wok upside down, dry, over a high fire until it was very hot, after which he pressed the dough balls into little disks all over the inside and flattened them slightly with his fingers. “This is another dish of the Empress Dowager’s,” he told his son. “This one came to her in a dream. Did you know that? The Old Buddha dreamed, and then she ordered her chefs to make it.” He smiled. “Actually it’s not bad,” he said.

The wok with the dough disks inside it went back over the fire, upside down and angled, constantly turned, carefully watched, until all the flat cakes were golden brown and ready to be popped off.

“Split them,” Liang Yeh said, handing the steaming plate to Sam. “Stuff them with the meat.” Sam started this, fingers flying. Each one emitted a fragrant puff of steam when he opened it to push in the meat. Meanwhile his father turned to his other bowl of dough, this one of corn and chestnut flour, and worked it until it was ready. From this he shaped a swift panful of tiny thimble-shaped cones.

“After all these years?” Sam said, because he recognized what his father was making — xiao wo tou. This was the dish that had caused him to flee Gou Bu Li that night. This was the rustic favorite of the Empress, which Liang Wei had warned his son never to make. “Why now?”

“Better than being haunted by ghosts, isn’t it? Besides, it’s another resonance on your rustic theme. For those who know their history, the connection will satisfy.” Watching the speed at which he moved, it was impossible for Sam to believe that those fingers had been resting for forty years.

The corn cones went in the oven only briefly — fuel had been scarce on the road when the Empress fled — and then came out. He arranged them on a plain platter with the tiny meat-stuffed cakes. “Think of it as a pause by the side of the road,” he told his son as he packed everything on a tray around a turnip that Tan had turned into a fragile pink peony.

“Should I tell the panel the background story?” said Sam, before he carried it out. “Because I don’t think they will know.”

“Surely they will know,” said Liang Yeh. “It’s the Empress Dowager.”

“Brother,” chided Jiang, “they won’t know. They have forgotten.”

Liang Yeh shrugged. “Then let it be.”

Sam took the platter from his father. He saw that his father was different here, light, almost at ease, in the way he must have been when he was young. Gone was the ill-fitting cloak of exile he had worn for so many years, the hunched and anxious shoulders. Sam wished his mother could be here, seeing it. She loved Liang Yeh, loved his kindness and his mordant humor; she would be uplifted to see him so happy. Sam felt a pang of longing for them to be together, the three of them, with his father like this, here in China.

Back in the kitchen Sam noticed Maggie sitting now, watching. She was so attentive. Her presence reminded him that most people did not watch things very closely. Well, it was her job. She was a writer. He liked knowing she was there. She saw everything. He almost seemed to see his own life more clearly when she was here to witness it. Soon, though, she would be gone. “How much longer are you going to be in China?” he said.

“I try not to think about that.”

“Why?”

“I guess I don’t want to leave. I would never have thought I would like it here, this much. But I do. It feels good.”

“So stay,” he said.

“I can’t. I have to work. By the way,” she said quickly, changing the subject, “he’s amazing, your father. He really kept his skills up. I thought you said he never cooked!”

“He hasn’t, for many years,” said Sam. “He’s just naturally great. He’s the last Chinese chef.”

“No, Sam,” she said. “You are.”

He smiled. “That’s why I wish you didn’t have to leave.”

“I feel the same.”

“So maybe you’ll come back.”

She said nothing. He held the first of the three molds over the sink and, supporting it with a sieve, dislodged it in one piece. He opened the crevice just a bit, and sizzling pork fat ran off and hissed into the sink.

“Nephew! Your sense has vanished and left you!” Jiang flew across the room at him.

“Remember?” Sam said to Maggie in English. “I told you this would cause a fight.” Then he went back to Chinese. “Uncle, we don’t need all the fat.”

“But this dish is you er bu ni,” To taste of fat without being oily. “That is its point!”

“This is enough fat.”

“Leave him!” cried Liang Yeh. “Do you not think he knows the right amount? To the droplet? To the touch?”

A change came over the room. Even Maggie felt the fine hairs on her arms stand up.

“Perhaps you are right,” said Jiang in Chinese.

“Thanks, Dad,” said Sam, using English. Then, in Chinese: “It’s so rich already. And this is the first rice we’ve had. I assure you, for the meishijia, the fat is waiting, delicate and aromatic as a soufflé, right under the skin.” He turned to his father. “You serve it. Please. I served your corn cakes and your sloppy joes.”

“Xiao wo tou and shao bing jia rou mo,” his father said. “Learn the Chinese names.”

“I will,” Sam said. And Liang Yeh carried the tray in high, with a flourish. They heard his smart steps across the floor, the click of the plates on the table, and then, from the panel, low shrieks of disbelief, submission, almost weeping.

“They’re going to eat the fat,” Tan predicted.

“Five to two says no,” Sam said. “A hundred kuai.”

“Done,” Tan said, satisfied. He had cooked for the meishijia all his life. He knew they would eat the fat.

Jiang stood back to let Liang Yeh back in and peered out through the crack in the door. “You win,” he said to Tan. “They’re eating it. Any more dishes?”

“One,” said Sam. “The last metaphor. It’s easy now. I made the broth yesterday.” From the refrigerator he took a bowl with about six cups of rich-looking jellied broth. “Lamb broth. I boiled it for three hours — lamb meat and bones, and wine, and all kinds of aromatics. Then I cooled it, took out all the fat.” He dumped the jellied broth into a pot. “Every great banquet ends with a fish,” he told Maggie in English. “This is going to be carp in lamb broth.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that combination,” said Maggie.

“It’s a literary finish. This last dish creates a word, perhaps the single most important word in the Chinese culinary language — xian, the fresh, clean taste. The character for xian is made up of two characters — the character for fish combined with the character for lamb. In this dish the two are joined. They mesh. They symbolize xian. They are xian.”

“Is it hard to make them work together, carp and lamb?”

“Harder than you think. It’s about the balance of flavors. Lamb cooked in wine is sweet and strong. Carp is meaty and also strong. If you can find just the right meeting point, they’re perfect.” The broth was heating up.

“It smells wonderful.”

“Watch,” he said. “As full as the people out there are, they’ll eat the soup, all of it.” He added the fish, brought the broth and the fish back to a boil, and immediately turned it out into a famillerose tureen. The smell was the two natural musks, of lamb and of carp, made one.

“Mm.” She drew it in. “In the beginning was the Word.”

He laughed at her, delighted, and took off his apron. “That’s it!” He lifted the bowl. It was done.

Dessert was a platter of rare fruits, trimmed and carved into bite-sized flowers and other small pleasing geometries, then assembled like a mosaic into the shape of a flying yellow dragon — imperial style, with five claws instead of four. This was another of Uncle Tan’s creations.

Crafting thematic images with fruits and vegetables was a common Chinese culinary trick, practiced at all the better restaurants, so when Sam first brought the fruit mosaic to the table the only comment it excited was on the perfection of the dragon and the pleasing way in which the finale reinforced the Liang family’s roots in imperial cuisine. It was only after the panel began to nibble at the fruits that the cries of happy surprise once again rose from the table. None of the fruits were what they expected. They were from every corner of China and her territories, like the delicacies that had always been brought to the Emperor. There were mangosteens and soursops and cold litchi jelly from the south, deep-orange Hami melon from Xinjiang, jujubes and crab apples and haws from China’s northeast.

If the members of the panel ate enough of the fruit to see the line of calligraphy alongside the painting of peaches on the plate, they would also find an excerpt from Yi Yin’s famous description of the tribute fruits brought to court, written in the eighteenth century B.C.: North of the Chao Range there are all kinds of fruit eaten by the Gods. The fastest horses are required to fetch them. If they ate far enough, they would read these lines and the connection would be complete.

Sam didn’t know if they would reach the quotation or not, but by now he saw that it didn’t matter. The act was enough. There was totality in the act.

Now, from the dining room, they were cheering and calling out. Maggie touched his arm. “I think they want you.”

So he walked in. They rose to their feet, crying out their happiness, applauding. “Marvelous!” “Unforgettable!” “The Liangs have returned.”

“Thank you,” he said back to them, “thank you.” He felt himself practically vibrating with happiness. He introduced his assistants, his father and his uncles, one by one. He bowed. He thanked them again.

After hearing the names, one of the panelists addressed Sam’s father. “You are Liang Yeh? The son of Liang Wei?”

“I am he,” the old man said.

“So interesting. There is another face to the family name!”

“Yes,” Liang Yeh said simply, smiling at the panelist, saying no more.

Sam watched. He remembered what First Uncle had told him about Liang Yeh laboring under his own father’s fame, and once again he saw his father differently, not as his father but as a man with his own private mountains in front of him.

Sam continued thanking the panel for their compliments, aware that very soon now they would leave. Chinese diners never lingered around a table as did Westerners. After completing a meal and taking the appropriate time to exchange moods of surfeit, gratitude, and admiration, they would rise as one and politely depart as a group. It was the custom.

Sam saw his problem. Someone had to go out, quickly, to unlock the front gate. Originally this had been Tan’s job, but Tan was out of commission. And he could not go himself. As the chef he had to see the panelists out.

Head averted, just enough, he managed to catch Jiang’s eye and signal toward the front. Jiang understood. He made a small confirming nod and stepped back from the group, quietly, to turn for the door.

When Jiang Wanli caught Nephew’s signal, he remembered that Xiao Tan was in no condition to run out and open the gate. Nephew was right. Someone had to go. He excused himself from the dining room, slipped back into the kitchen, and quickly crossed it to walk out through the back door. He hurried past the slab of stone where Nephew did the butchering, through the small arch, and into the courtyard, his old wisp of a frame quiet. The sky was clear now above the gathering trees, the small spotlights shining along the path. He kept to the quiet shadows along the side, by the south verandah, in front of the one room Nephew had not refin-ished. He pulled his old cardigan close around him.

Just as he rounded the spirit screen he heard the door from the main dining room clatter back. Nephew was leading them out. He stretched his arm out, shaking a little, and turned the lock to release the gate. There. Now what? They were halfway across the court. Where could he go? There was the door into the little guardhouse. He didn’t know if it was locked. He tried the handle. It turned. He heard Nephew’s voice saying goodbye, moving toward the ceramic-faced wall. He opened the door and stepped trembling inside.

It was a cramped cubicle, full of dust. They came flowing around the screen and their voices drifted right through the grillwork window to him. “Work of art . . . Meizhile . . . Beautiful . . . Above everyone except possibly Yao . . . Yes . . . Too bad, isn’t it? . . . About the minister’s son! . . . Oh, yes . . . Too bad . . .” Jiang stood in the darkness, listening. He held his breath so as not to sneeze. “Too bad . . .” Their voices faded as they passed into the street.

Old fool, Jiang told himself, you knew this. You heard it from the Master of the Nets the day you took Nephew to meet him. Still, it hurt. Because from the meal tonight there had risen the fragrance of genius.

When First Uncle had locked the gate again and made his way back to the kitchen, he found the family embracing one another, pouring wine. Even Tan was allowed to drink again. Young Liang and Old Liang had their arms linked, Nephew and his father, a sight Jiang had lived long to see. Everyone was happy, even the foreign woman, who, he noticed, did not like to take her eyes off Young Liang. If Nephew didn’t see why she was here, he was blind. Jiang might take him aside and tell him.

“Uncle!” Sam cried. “What do you think? They loved it!”

“They did,” said Jiang, his heart swelling for the boy who had cooked so well. No, he decided; he would not tell him what he’d just heard at the gate. Let him enjoy his success. In any case, speaking technically, it was nothing Nephew did not already know. He had been in the fish purveyor’s office that day too. He knew.

“Listen!” cried Liang Yeh. “I vow that by this time tomorrow it will be kuai zhi ren kou, On everyone’s lips. You will succeed! I am sure!”

“I agree,” said Jiang.

Tan drained off another cup of wine. “Now let’s go eat!” he said. “Before I die from hunger.”

“Do we have to go out?” Jiang complained.

All five of them looked at what had been the kitchen. It was a wreck.

“There’s nothing to eat here,” Sam said dismissively.

They accepted this instantly. The talk bounced ahead to an animated discussion of possible restaurants. Eventually it was decided that the three elders must have jing jiang rou si, a celestially delicious local dish of shredded pork in piquant sauce rolled up with spring onion in a tofu wrapper. This specialty was available at many places around Beijing, but they had to have the choicest and most succulent, and for that they had to trek to a certain restaurant on the northeast side of town.

“Not me,” said Nephew. “I can’t eat right now. You go.” And they all walked out to the lakefront together so he could get a car for them, get them comfortable inside, and chat with the driver for a minute about finding the restaurant, which was down a side street and easily missed the first time one looked for it.

Jiang clasped Nephew’s hand one last time. He understood some English, just a little, and before they drove away he heard Young Liang say to the American girl, “Come on. I’ll lock the gate and take you home.”

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