Double Cup Love Page 11

  “I just stir-fried it with vinegar and wai jui bai jioh.”*12

  “Oh, wow. This is local bai jioh, but I never see anyone cook with it. Crazy. Sitting here in front of us whole time, but American Taiwanese come back and use it with bitter melon….So crazy.”

  The bus driver spoke. He hadn’t said a word all night, but you could see him intently studying the food wanting to understand everything going on in the plate.

  “Uhhh, Eddie, right?” said Fish.

  “Yeah!”

  “OK, so, I was very excited to eat your food. I am tse huo*13 and I very much pay attention to these things. Rabbi is right. This bitter melon is very special.”

  “Most special!” said Rabbi.

  “Yes, but Rabbi likes spicy so the red-cooked pork, he doesn’t get because it’s slightly sweet.”

  “Needs more spicy!” interjected Fat Man Scoop, a.k.a. Rabbi.

  “No, I disagree. This red-cooked pork is just as special as the bitter melon because it, too, is entirely new. You have combined certain techniques from your experience with Taiwanese lu wei and also Hunan style red-cooked pork, but this is undoubtedly your dish. It could only come from your experience.”

  Startled at the compliment he just paid me, I deflected and made the conversation about Fish.

  “Fish, I’m curious. What do you do? Like for a job. Are you a food writer?”

  “No. I drive the general and give tours of Tibet.”

  “This is a very specific experience as well.”

  For a kid who spent most of his life in an Orlando cul-de-sac, it was a revelation to be back on the mothership—to come home and touch the culture I knew was part of me but never fully understood and maybe still don’t. It was a testament to the universality of culture and identity and values that a Chinese seed could be blown out to a cul-de-sac in Orlando, Florida, via Taiwan, and still grow to be understood by its brethren back on the mothership. The force is strong and the Empire will never erase us.

  I became confident that if I had kids with Dena that were half-Chinese/Taiwanese, half-Irish/Italian, I’d still be reflected in them. But then I started thinking if it was egotistical to desire reflection in another human being. What if I just let it go? What if I just trusted that if I set my essence free into another human being that it would be taken to places and people and dishes that I couldn’t imagine? I once again remembered DMX*14 and thought to myself: how far does the bitter melon go?

  * * *

  *1 My Chinese name was changed three times by a fortune teller. First it was Xiao Wen, then Xiao Tsen, then Xiao Ming.

  *2 Bad guy mummy from ThunderCats.

  *3 “Is that a world tour or your girl’s tour?” I once told a friend I’d never quote Drake but…anything goes in the footnotes.

  *4 Dry wok.

  *5 Nama, or draft sake, is unpasteurized. It’s my favorite. You get more floral notes; it’s fresh and very springtime.

  *6 Cooks say “mise-en-place” = everything in its place. Then you abbreviate it like, “Yo, Liam, you got your place ready?” Or, “J.R., you got the place packed?” You’re asking if your homie has all the ingredients for the dish he’s making ready, in their proper place, ready to cook. Like anything else, cooking is about preparation.

  *7 A brand of bai jioh, white liquor, sold in a bottle with an offset neck, so they call it crooked mouth bai jioh.

  *8 Real-time strategy.

  *9 When Chinese people freestyle, they squat and eat. No matter where you are, no matter what you’re wearing, Chinese people are seemingly just predisposed to squatting and shoveling food into their mouths with chopsticks. For purposes of urban development, I think this is a very futuristic maneuver.

  *10 Boston Market basically serves Thanksgiving every day.

  *11 In the heat of the moment, I didn’t have the space to qualify this against the backdrop of appropriation, but in retrospect, I didn’t need to. Appropriation is when something is taken and ripped, then reapplied as a skin for a different definition and idea. What I’m talking about here is for the idea to remain intact but to mutate and evolve within itself in relation to the environment, without being plucked by the invisible hand. #FuckYouAdamSmith

  *12 Crooked mouth bai jioh.

  *13 Chowhound.

  *14 “If you love something let it go, if it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” —DMX, who also makes an appearance in Fresh Off the Boat for the same quote.

  PART 2

  LAST DAYS ALONE

  Corky

  The nice way to describe Shanghai would be “Westernized,” but if you sit a first-generation Shanghainese-American parent down and ask them about their children or Shanghai after watching a subpar episode of The Voice China, they’ll probably mutter something closer to “compromised.”

  I went to Shanghai because it was supposed to be the city in China that most paralleled my existence. Not just because of its red-cooked pork, but also because of its compromises. I dreaded going, but standing on the wave of my latest revelations, I didn’t want to fall back into the trap of villainizing the West. Being Western wasn’t Shanghai’s problem, conforming to a larger global normalizing of identity was. Shanghai felt like a constant, depressing reminder of what we were all becoming: an international class of third culture kids. But before the third culture extinguished old Shanghai, I was determined to find it one last time using the same thing that allowed me to tell my story in America: red-cooked pork.

  I have to admit that even Old Shanghai was compromised in its way. I’m no historian, but I find it impossible to talk about Shanghai’s modern development without first noting that it took place largely under the spell of opium. I spent one summer of my life smoking black tar opium, and I can tell you that anything is possible with the Big O, except voluntary action. You can lie in your bed drooling on a pillow dreaming up plans for the new Death Star, but actually picking up a pen and drafting those plans is humanly impossible. You may think that the force is strong and that you are lifting all the furniture in your room off the ground, but I promise you NOTHING is moving in that room, especially not your bowels, because you probably won’t shit for a week while smoking opium. (This is why I believe the opening lyrics to House of Pain’s “Jump Around” are about opium constipation.)*1I say all this to make the point that while Great Britain may not have actually and intentionally opiate-raped us, intentions really don’t matter when your actions in fact render someone helpless and involuntary.

  And to what do we owe this incredible opium slumber? A trade deficit resulting from the exchange of tea. British people fucked with tea so heavy that even though they were on the gold standard, they’d go switch their money up for silver from other countries to exchange with China for tea. There was a huge deficit because there wasn’t shit that Chinese people or the rest of the world for that matter wanted from England. If China were trading with France, this never would have happened, because France has shit you might actually want. Oh, croissants, Viognier from the northern Rhone, and gelatinous foods like head cheese? Yes, I’ll trade you some high mountain oolong tea. England was probably rollin’ up on countries like, “Excuse me, kind sir, could I interest you in jellied eels, medieval torture weapons, or English springer spaniels?” SON, we got GREMLINS, shih tzus, and you know EWOKS are from China, right? The fuck do we need spaniels for?

  Regardless, China got fucked up heavy because England started growing opium in India and dumping it on Shanghai in exchange for tea. When the Qing dynasty tried to stop the trade of opium, England pretended not to understand why anyone would want to stop the wholesale unloading of narcotics on their population. This would literally be Tijuana throwing its arms up at the U.S. like, “What? We can’t just send heroin to L.A. for pastrami from Langer’s? This is entirely unreasonable.”

  After numerous wars, settlements, and treaties, Shanghai became the most “open” city in China. Economically at least, it’s no longer constipated. It is probably the most
diverse in terms of non-Chinese residents and tourists, although some areas of China are more varied in their mix of Chinese ethnic groups. In Shanghai you have the Bund,*2 you have Laowai Jie (literally, “Foreigner Street”), and restaurants and sucky-sucky spots that cater to foreign businessmen. While separate and unequal race-based segregation is commonplace in America—ethnic food aisles, Inglewood, and Queensbridge,*3 where we set aside our shittiest spaces for black people and immigrants to enjoy foods that increase the probability of heart disease—China puts its best foot forward when carving up its cities for foreign vultures. One by-product of all this is third culture kids.

  Corky Shu is a third culture kid. I met him sometime in early 2013 on Doyers Street in Manhattan outside Excellent Pork Chop House. He was carrying bags of sneakers and skateboards he’d just gotten from Supreme. If you drew a stencil outlining Corky in that moment, he could have been the Hypebeast Jumpman logo. Truth be told, I could be the logo two days out of the week as well, but like a dog that could smell another dog with the same disease, I knew what Corky had and steered clear.

  A few months later, I was sitting in Chengdu Instagramming the red-cooked pork I’d made at Hakka Homes, asking if anyone in China wanted to “TEST THE CHAMPION SOUND.” Random commenters left messages telling me to try Old Jesse, Fu 1088, and a few other Shanghainese spots with red-cooked pork. Of course, red-cooked pork originates from Shanghai, and as a practitioner of Hunan-style red-cooked pork, I wanted to try the best.

  I was also impressed by how many people out there on Instagram were ready to help me find Shanghai’s best red-cooked pork. So, I enlisted the internets to help me once again, this time with a more serious problem: watching internet porn.

  The first response I got was a message from Corky.

  What’s good? You outchea? Hit me, homie. I’m in Shanghai.

  Yea I don’t know anyone out there, so lemme know.

  Ha ha. Come to the Hai this weekend. You should’ve been here last weekend, was kind of crazy.

  Ignoring his attempt at afflicting me with FOMO,*4 I disregarded his comment and got to the important things in life.

  Yo, what are the Bangbros-type sites in China? All my shit is blocked.

  LOL. You need a VPN to get on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Try and download Astrill and see if you can buy a month subscription.

  What’s a VPN? All I need is Bangbros and World Star.

  A VPN gives you a different IP address so all those websites aren’t blocked. It tells the China firewall that you’re logged on from the U.S.

  Aight, I’ma hit you when I’m in Shanghai. Also, I wanna try the best hong sau rou. Shanghai style. Any ideas? I was thinking old xin ji.

  Bet. Come through. I got no hooks there, but I can call and make a reservation for you and talk to them ahead of time. Hit me on WhatsApp if you need anything.

  I landed in Shanghai a few days later, dropped my bags at my hotel, then went to meet Corky with Evan in tow. He had told us to meet him in the lobby of this hotel called the Puli, which I immediately liked ’cause it rhymed with coolie and coochie and “Oochie Wally,” but I don’t think they’ve ever played “Oochie Wally” at this joint. The lobby was cold, sterile, and uninviting: typical modern Shanghai. A grand hotel lobby outfitted with dark minimalism and square leather club chairs that dared you to sit in them.

  So many of Shanghai’s high-end experiences seem derived from the Forbidden City: ninety-nine ways to make you feel like a eunuch in the presence of the divine. I was crunchy as I cut through the Puli lobby, and then I saw Corky. He had shaggy hair with a white tee, basketball shorts, and Margiela Chuck Taylors.

  Corky had a strange crew in tow. An ad agency couple from New York, a henchman from work, and some other “influencers” in town for some sort of activewear conference in Shanghai. Having not spoken English to anyone besides Evan in a week, it was weird to be suddenly facing New York in Shanghai.

  “This is Cramer and his wife. They’re—”

  Cramer lunged forward.

  “Yo! You know my boy, from—”

  He was interrupted by his friend.

  “Dude, Vice is blowing up, man! Congrats on…”

  I tuned out. I knew exactly what was happening, and I was regretting it already. I just did the immigrant smile, shook hands, and avoided any sort of real conversation. I thought about bailing on dinner and just exploring Shanghai on my own. While the others studied the art on the walls, I leaned over to Evan.

  “Yo, Ev, we should just get outta here, man. This is one of those fuccboi business dinners.”

  “Yeah, this is googin-faced, but I think it’d be pretty rude if you just left, man.”

  The plan was to eat at Madam Zhu’s, an upmarket restaurant in a mall you reached via escalator. Zhu’s was very cinematic: it sought to suspend your disbelief and transport you to an amalgamation of outdoor Chengdu teahouses and a Shanghainese salon, but the restaurant was such a big, bright, white box that it just felt empty and contrived. At Zhu’s nothing was suspended, my disbelief was constant, and I remained persistently aware I was eating in a fucking mall.

  There were classic dishes on Madam Zhu’s menu, like roast duck and lion’s head meatballs, with some updated joints thrown in like wok-tossed cauliflower, snow-pea-shoot fried rice, and a decent rendition of red-cooked pork. I liked that they served nouveau iterations of dishes you’d make out of necessity at home, such as the pea-shoot fried rice, alongside classic banquet dishes.

  Growing up, you never saw pea-shoot fried rice on a restaurant menu. It had no protein! There weren’t even eggs! What up with the scallions doe, doggy? No, pea-shoot fried rice looked like green Filipino garlic fried rice: broke, one ingredient, struggle carbs. But like Filipino garlic fried rice, it came out of an experience. We had pea-shoot fried rice when Moms forgot to buy eggs or we ran out of eggs or when the only thing in the fridge was pea shoots and old rice. So you make it happen, and after it happens consistently over the course of your entire childhood, you start to crave pea-shoot fried rice. Through the last half decade in China and Taiwan, I saw pea-shoot fried rice pop up sporadically in fine restaurants, and it’s proven every single time to be the perfect carb. Pea-shoot fried rice was officially good enough to put on the table in the presence of guests who hadn’t been over to the crib since the Opium Wars. Whether Madam Zhu’s was reflecting an experience or reflecting other menus, I didn’t care. I was proud to see home cooking on the menu. Ninja, we made it.

  “What you think about the food, fam?” asked Corky.

  “It’s on point. Evan, make sure to get photos of the mi tze huo twai, they bury it in sugar on sticky rice. Haven’t seen that in a while. Also, the flounder is Shanghai-style but a lot more tsao lu and soy sauce than usual. Definitely makes it a richer dish. Same with their sea cucumber, I think they thicken it with roe and the brown sauce is a gravy. Shanghainese food here is a bit more cloying, but deep.”

  “Got it.”

  Corky watched us taking notes.

  “Damn, y’all do this everywhere?”

  “Yup.” Evan somehow conveyed negative excitement.

  “Actually, scratch that, Evan. It’s shrimp roe, not fish roe. Fish roe would be bigger.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  I could tell Evan was annoyed and embarrassed to be taking notes at dinner. It was constantly a point of contention. Corky laughed. “Evan the henchman over here.”

  I didn’t laugh.

  “Nah, we’re partners.”

  As the dishes kept coming, I noticed that the chef had a steady hand, precise execution, balanced flavors, and a flair for creativity when the situation called for it, but not gratuitously. The level of skill was incredibly high. Madam Zhu’s actually had the same goals as modern “Asian” restaurants in America, i.e., to bring the culture of dark people to upwardly mobile people, but they didn’t clumsily push Chinese food through a French ricer. While the dining room suffered from Sichuanese theatrics and big-box Western comforts, the plate wa
s unscathed. Most dishes used the tried and true techniques, keeping their identities intact for third culture consumption. Some even refined those techniques. I found it entirely more enjoyable to eat scallion oil chicken at Madam Zhu’s with the scallions and ginger cut 80 percent thinner than they are at Noodletown in N.Y. or any Hong Kong–style cafe. It’s just sad that we didn’t do it until we had guests over.*5

  I enjoyed Madam Zhu’s even though it was part of the Kitchen Consensus: You can’t escape the square plate, the reduction, the removal of bones, or the white patrons who consume culture along lines demarcated by a tire manufacturer. At times, I find myself reading this tire manufacturer’s guidelines on how, when, where, what, and why to dine and almost always disagree. From Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses to the Confucian Analects to the Michelin Guide, they’re all just listicles mobilizing the middle*6 in an effort to create a consensus. I’d say I hate the consensus, but it’s impossible to hate something that doesn’t exist. Whether it’s Washington, D.C., Middle East peace, or a true shooting percentage, there is no such thing as a consensus, just the idea of one. But chasing the consensus has derailed us since the beginning.

  I don’t like tablecloths, I don’t subscribe to the idea that there’s one objective way to be excellent, I don’t like when an international class of moneyed people dictates the way we present local cultures, but I liked Madam Zhu’s. I liked it because it didn’t sacrifice the identity of the food. There wasn’t that feeling you get in some “starred” restaurants that the world has passed you by, that properly steaming scallion chicken is a lost art, that shortcuts were taken in service of the bottom line but disservice of the craft. At Madam Zhu’s, the pasteurization didn’t usurp the thing being pasteurized.