New Streams of Life (8)
New Streams of Life (8)
Yesterday I went to Sainsbury with my friend and his mother for the weekly shopping. They planned to arrange a Chinese dinner over this weekend to celebrate CNY
festival. I told them my mother used to cook eight courses at noon of New Year
Eve. While my sister and I tried to help in the kitchen, my father and my brother were busy hanging New Year couplets on the doors, cleaning the floor, and attending to last-minute customers in the shop.
Around 12:30 the meal would be usually ready, except for the soup. Father would
start to drink beer or spirit, whilst we three children had orange juice or wine
at our hand. The courses normally were comprised of beef with Chinese cabbage,
pork with cauliflower, chicken with Chinese cabbage, steamed fish dumpling (sweet and sour), chicken pasta ( local speciality) with spinach, fish with coriander
, meat and vegetable stuffed dumpling with green vegetable, and finally sea-fish
( not sure its English name exactly) soup. My mother always had the aptitude to
make her dishes smell and taste of their own unique flavour.
As far as my friend is concerned, Chinese food were far from delectable most of
the time. So he couldn’t understand why I longed for food my mothered cooked. Had been cooking for us years, my mother managed to know her each child’s taste
and preference. On the New Year reunion dinner table, everyone therefore could easily detect his or her favourite. Slightly pickled fish was my favourite. My mother was able to make the dish moderately sour and salty to the extent that I could never have enough, and that I could hardly relate a single CNY without the fish course my mother prepared.
I guess that’s why I don’t feel overexcited about the CNY dinner here. No matter how rich it looks, it will always be adapted New Year dinner. Ingredients and
the way of cooking will always be different. And though I will still be of help
in the kitchen, the cook won’t be my mother any longer. The whole sense of New
Year celebration has therefore been changed. I told my friend that I really don
’t mind passing the New Year festival without Chinese dinner. I would prefer what they have normally to the Chinese dinner according to their definition. It’s
not Chinese dinner that I missed after all.
Yesterday on BBC I read that 2 billion people were on the road in China during CNY. It was a terrifying figure. To interpret it in light of my situation, it would mean that it would be near to impossible for me to go back at this time of year. Flying back to China is not difficult, but taking transportation from Shanghai or Beijing back to my hometown would be an impossible task. It would mean the
fad of going-back-to-hometown-for-CNY, the crappy condition of transportation in China, and the backwardness of my hometown (no plane, no train, no instant bus
available) totally demolish my dream of going back home, of helping my mother
cook in the kitchen, and finally of having dinner at the table with my whole family.
So when most people are merry in China at this time of year, I am gutted.
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