Liquid Gold, Delivered in a Bowl
By 纵然平行
Forward: This piece was written for a special net event
hosted by Blogger 暗香盈袖. (http://blog.wenxuecity.com/blogview.php?date=201110&postID=31580）
As Chinese, most of us would be influenced and benefited
through our proud soup culture one way or the other. But for me, soups created
another complex dimension: my life has been entangled so deep and so wide with
so many varieties of soups that sometimes I actually wonder what if a surgeon
put me on the operation table to cut me open, he or she might be surprised to
find out my blood vessels and arteries are flowing soups in alphabetic order,
of course in Chinese pingig, instead of normal blood.
Growing up in eastern part of China, seasons came and went in
my life were not just signaled by layers of clothes I needed to wear but the
rotations of hot and cold soups brought up on the dinner table. I had soups
made with ordinary veggies, bean curd, poultry, pork, beef, mutton, fish and
ones made from exotic ingredients such as shark fins and swallow bird nests.
Among all these soups I had, there is one soup standing out as my all-time
favorite; that is an organic free-ranged chicken soup.
Yes! Chicken soup - the golden broth was so rich and intense
resulted from hours simmering. The aroma floated out from the cooking pot in
the kitchen and carried with soft murmurs of the woman’s chatting permeating
into every corner of our house. Its delightful scent let you reach beyond the
physical boundaries. To me, it was a well-defined motif bearing same meaning as
a piece of well-versed culinary poetry or a piece of soft lullaby sang by a
loving mother to her child.
You may ask what is so special about chicken soup. To answer
your question, you may have to “hold your horse” for a moment so, allowing me
to give you some background info before we get there.
Today I can be easily labeled as a big and tall guy, but few
would realize that I was actually born
as a preemie baby - about two months ahead of the supposed due day. I came to
this world earlier because my mother was unfortunately hit by a bicycle rider.
Before she knew it, I had been already placed in an incubator where she worked
as an Ob-Gyn doc. She told me many times that she felt awful and cheated, in
retrospect, that she never got a chance, as so many patients of her did, to
hold me for few moments and say few tender words before the nurse would take
the newborn away.
If the problem with me would end in hospital ward, then it
would be an understatement. In fact, the saga of misery was just opening the
first chapter. After my mother brought me home about two month later after I
was born, my self-reliant mother with strong can-do attitude faced her biggest
challenge she ever encountered in her entire life. Simply put, she could not produce enough milk to feed a hungry and growing boy whose digest system didn't agree with the powder milk in
the cans. According to my grandmother, when it came to the feeding time, the
supposed pleasant mother and son bonding time was quickly escalated into the “battles” - a torture for both. It often ended up with the crying mother and
her screaming boy. Based upon my father's recollection, then I was so thin and
weak that figuratively and literally I was like a malnutrition newborn dog
puppy. And the irony was that my mother as an OB doctor who knew every possible
cure available then for her less productive mammary glands and lactiferous
ducts, and she tried them all. But to her dismay, nothing worked even with help
of those milk-inducing soups and dishes my grandmother made. As a result, I was
frequently brought to the hospital for medical attention. One day at lunch
break, one of my mother's friends told my mother that her cousin in the
countryside had given birth to a boy, but unfortunately the three-week old baby
boy died at night due to incorrect sleeping position. “All the sudden,
something lit up in my mind.” she told me when I was old enough to know certain
things.
Later I found out that my family’s decision of hiring a
wet-nurse worked out very well in several fronts. First, Auntie Li was able to
escape from the nightmare of losing her infant son and as well as from the
blames laid on her by the villagers and her own family. Secondly she was no
longer suffered from her bulging and over productive mammary glands since there
was this constantly hungry crying baby boy kept yearning for more milk.
Thirdly, feeding an infant of her baby's age alleviated the mental pain of her
own, giving her an opportunity to reclaim her ill-fated motherhood to some
degree. Last but not least she was treated and paid well in our family that she
realized that a person’s life could be so much different in a totally different
place.
One major changed in our home after Auntie Li's arrival was
the frequency of making chicken soups in our kitchen. To help her produce more
breast milk to sustain the hungry baby boy, Auntie Li often made chicken soups
with live hens every week, and she had never tired of drinking it. In fact, she
credited its magical affects for her never-ending fountain of milk for a fast
growing baby boy. My grandma told me many times that Auntie Li often chuckled
with content after the feedings like that “Mom drinks more chicken soup so
you'd drink more milk, growing big and tall.” My grandmother added that later
but, knowing Auntie Li would never say that in front my mother, who often was
torn between her own feelings and her son's health. Time to time when she
returned home from a day’s work, my mother found out her affection towards to
her son was mismatched by him. My mother has never said a word in front of me about her bruised emotions between her and Auntie Li , yet my father told me that Auntie Li became increasingly a “threat” as I grew older from my mother’s vantage point. Today I surely can understand
the dilemma my mother faced: on one hand, It’s her who brought in the solution
which not only solved the problem, but also made her life much easier, on the
other hand, she was afraid that she was losing something in front her eyes
every day as Auntie Li and her own son were getting closer and closer. One
morning a few days after I turned to four when I woke up, I discovered Auntie
Li was no longer in our house any more. My grandmother told me later with my
grandpa's backup that I went berserk, refusing to eat and drink, and the whole
house was in chaos.
When I was growing up, Auntie Li came to visit us every
couple of years. Each time she come to visit , she would brought us bags of her
local specialties such as dried cured eels, salty fish, new crops of sweet
rice, fresh shelled peanuts, nine time out of ten, she brought live hens with
her. Often she would help my grandmother and mother to clean the birds, making
the chicken soup I favored with dry dark mushrooms or anther fragrant mushrooms
with an interesting name – monkey's head. I remember when I was little boy, she
would sit in my room and play with me for hours, she would carry me on her lap
and use her chin to rub my hair a little, talking about something in her own
life that I had no clue about it. I would crawl up and down of her lap,
listening to her soft voices and showing my favorite books and toys to her. A
couple of time, I questioned her why she called me her son, and why I was my
mom's son too. For that, she never answered my question directly or be angry at
me either. Sometime during our Q and A, her eyes would turn red, I would be
quiet and lean my body to hers while he aroma of chick soup drifted around us.
When I went to college, Auntie Li made less visits to our house. She told me
that she was spending more time taking care of her aging parents and her sick
husband. But each time she came, it would be a great time for our whole family;
my mother would take her out for treats and buy her lots of gifts. Each time
before she said bye to me, she would pinch my face a bit, teasing my shyness.
Her hands that touched my cheeks were kind of coarse comparing with my mom's
yet with the same degree of warmth. Her eyes shined with affection that you can
tell only came from someone who cares.
Okay, enough these mushy stuffs, let us come back to the
chicken soup.
As we know, not all the chick soup is created equal. The one
I am talking about is the extraordinary one. For one thing, the bird in the
chicken soup I mentioned above is made from the organic free-ranch chicken
rather from those chicken packed in plastic in the supermarket we buy in
America. Only these hens which roam free at their wills are able provide a
strong and deep chicken flavor, plus the golden hue showed in the soup. More,
the hours of simmering accompanying with ginger, scallion and mushrooms in a deep
ceramic pot make the chicken meat so moist, wholesome, succulent and simply
delicious.
Maybe, because of the years Auntie Li being in my life,
treating me as her other son whom she has never had or because of her breast
milk helped by the chicken soup saved my life and laid the solid foundation
that allow me to maximize my physical potential, to me, chicken soup is no
longer a hot liquid any more, it turns into a synonymous with love and comfort.
If I can use a symbol to represent it, that would be the fuel made in kitchen
by the women who loved me and filled up my tank for the journey where my heart
leads to.
Note: The photo is from the net.
Thanks for stop-by. I am afraid that what you saw is the simple side, the elegant one might be still distant away. :))
Just kidding you, and have a good weekend!
This is the guy who are on the elegant side of the balance? I've not seen the simplicity side yet? Haha-Haha...
Drop by to say hi~~~