We spent 14 days in Asia, six of them eating around the clock with Kevin’s family. Three hours after stepping off the plane in Shanghai I was at Kevin’s grandparents’ house in Suzhou. They welcomed me into their home, sent me to wash up and then promptly sat us down to a decadent lunch, all of it cooked by Kevin’s grandmother. Hongshaorou (red cooked pork); baiyejie (tofu knots) with winter melon and chicken in a light broth; cold eggplant; greens. Just as we sat down to eat Kevin’s grandma fired up a small pot of oil to deep fry stuffed slices of lotus root. (An attempt on that lotus root coming very soon.) It was delicious, all of it. Most of these dishes were new to me, a Suzhou/Shanghainese style of Chinese cooking I never had access to in Cantonese-centric San Francisco. But more striking than the culinary novelty of it was the warmth of Kevin’s family–a warmth that transcended my inability to verbally communicate with them. My family is rather different; newcomers to my family must prove themselves and their worth. That’s my clan. I had no right to expect such warm-hearted openness from Kevin’s family, and they collected me into their embrace immediately.
When we got to back to the States, Kevin’s mom picked us up from the airport and brought us back home, where she immediately sat us down for lunch. She’d spent the morning cooking. Chili and black bean-steamed prawns; tofu and pidan (thousand year old eggs); cold pickled cucumber salad; and sliced pressed tofu and bean sprouts. And just as we were assembling around the table she pulled out a batch of freshly made pork and chicken wonton, rows and rows of plump dumplings. As we ate she moved back and forth from the table to the kitchen to fold up more wonton and pop them in a pot of boiling water, forbidding us to stop eating and help her.
Kevin’s mom’s delicious lunch certainly eased the pain of being back in the States, and there was a sweet symmetry to being welcomed back to California with the same treatment we’d received in Asia.
We met up with friends and family in every city we stopped in on our trip, and experienced something akin to this everywhere. I’d describe it as an almost aggressive hospitality (woe to the guest who dares pause eating in front of Kevin’s grandma). Unparalleled, mind-boggling generosity. I don’t know any other way to describe it.
