The Last Chinese Chef

Table of Contents

 

 

 

“Crackling with energy and ambition . . . a tantalizing read.”

“Using Chinese culinary history, language, and tantalizing descriptions of fine cuisine, Mones shows how food can both nourish the body and the soul.”

“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.”

“Outstanding and beautifully written . . . a great story about the discovery of one’s self.”

“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.’ ”

“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.”

“An entertaining and erudite novel cleverly interspersed with mouthwatering details on one of the world’s greatest cuisines.”

“Mones’s latest achievement appeals not just to devotees of fiction but equally to anyone interested in Chinese cooking, its theory, and its craft.”

“Mones has a subtle touch when portraying growing affection between genuinely nice people . . . Warning: Avoid reading while hungry.”

“Sumptuous . . . Early in her visit, Maggie scoffs at the idea that ‘food can heal the human heart.’ Mones smartly proves her wrong.”

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.

 

 

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.

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

 

 

M
aggie 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.”