Every holiday break, my 爷爷1 would drive nine hours with my 姥姥2 from Pittsburgh to Springfield to spend time with me. Since my 姥姥 gets dizzy easily in the car, she never got a license, leaving my 爷爷 to drive the entire stretch of highways himself
. Once, during a full day of Nutcracker rehearsal, I brought two 馅儿饼3 —I call them meat pancakes because that’s the closest thing I can think of to describe them— that my 爷爷 made for me. He spent the night before tediously preparing the dough and a filling of beef, chives, and cabbage. The morning of, he wrapped balls of filling with dough and pan fried them until they were crispy and flat. The umami smell was so inviting that I ate two for breakfast. Three hours into rehearsal, other eleven-year-olds were taking out their lunches of footlong sandwiches wrapped in the black, red, and white of Jimmy Johns. I took out the Tupperware that held my now-soggy meat pancakes, and its savory aroma filled the air. I remember, after my first bite, the girls walking by pinched their noses and complained of the smell. Their eyes darted around the room until they settled on me and my meat pancakes. Their skirts twisted sharply as they turned away and the kids sitting next to me also shifted. I remember feeling ashamed for eating my meat pancakes. I took one more bite and tightly shut the rubber lid.
What I didn’t understand at the time was why they reacted so differently to my food when we all needed food to survive. I was sad that those kids didn’t like my lunch, and I wanted them to. I didn’t want to be separated from others because of something small, like food. So I begged my 爷爷 to buy me Jimmy Johns before he dropped me off at rehearsal the next day. He was confused, wondering why I wanted a sandwich along with my chive baos, but I lied and said I was super hungry. I was hungry, but not enough to eat those baos. At rehearsal, the sandwich’s hard bread scraped the roof of my mouth, leaving it in terrible agony, but I felt great; I was sitting next to all the girls who were mice like me, and no one batted an eye at my food. After that day, I wanted to conform to their standards by getting my 爷爷 to buy those stale sandwiches for me. Yet every day, my 爷爷 insisted on stir-frying eggs and tomatoes, while my 姥姥 was adamant on feeding me her special pan-fried dumplings. I thought maybe they didn’t seem to understand the goal I had in mind. They were persistent in cooking something to place on the table so that when I passed, I couldn’t resist. Looking back on this, I regret how much I valued other girls’ opinions more than my own or my grandparents’ but it now seems obvious which one I have always cared more about: the meat pancakes tasted too good to forget.
It wasn’t until I was thirteen, sitting at the dining table, eating stir-fried eggplants, that my view changed back. My 爷爷 and 姥姥 told me how they grew up in the rural countryside of Shenyang during the Cultural Revolution, a time when food was scarce. When the crops were ready to be harvested, my 爷爷’s mother would stir-fry an eggplant with simple fried rice. My 姥姥 used to eat her father’s fresh-caught seafood every day, until her home was taken away from her. She was sent to the fields to work endlessly, not knowing if she would ever eat seafood again. When I eat their cooking, it’s not only their food I’m eating, but generations before them—techniques and flavors passed down through memory and reminiscence.
Listening to them made me regret my ignorance and stubbornness in not eating their food after all they have gone through to be able to cook a meal every day for me. I wanted to respect their courage in working hard to provide food to their families and taking risks like moving to Japan to get a better job. Up until then, I had lived in a gated community with my family and my friends, and my grandparents had gone through so many places, experiences, and tastes. I had always looked up to them as my caretakers and feeders, but never thought deeply about the life stories they could tell. This appreciation flickered when my food was rejected from a homogenous setting of white girls, yet it was rekindled when I saw my grandparents from another perspective.
Now that I’m older, I want to appreciate their heritage and culture even more. In an effort to preserve the food I ate growing up for future generations, I want to learn how to cook my grandparents’ food. I realize my identity is formed through the heritage of food, and there is no reason to be ashamed. When my grandparents were starving, food was not just a means of survival but a way that connected their families through familiar scents and tastes.
This past summer, when my grandparents drove another nine hours to see me, I asked how to make a meat pancake, but they told me to focus instead on my studies. I thought that I wasted that opportunity to learn from them when I was younger and free to do whatever. We have different priorities now—they want me to succeed the conventional way: get good grades, become a college graduate, and find a good job and family. But I want to connect with them more in the time they have to spare. I thought it was too late to express my gratitude towards our heritage in food but I was wrong. I realize, every time I eat out with my friends at a Chinese restaurant, it never compares to my grandparents’ cooking, and I know it’s because I take pride in the food that has been passed through generations to me. Because of that, it is now my turn to change their minds just as they changed mine through food.
In third grade, I thought it was interesting how so many people lined up for the water fountain after PE class. The line wrapped around the corner as impatient, sweaty little kids eagerly waited to get a sip. The thing is, this fountain was the worst fountain ever—it had zero water pressure, a metallic taste, and a rusted spout that looked like it had survived both world wars. You could be fifth in line and it would still take you several hundred “Mississippis” to get to the front. The water trickled—like a stream so far displaced from its river roots that you were pleasantly surprised it still flowed—and the only way to get any of it in your mouth was to place the spout dangerously close to your lips, then balance your head carefully between catching the next big disease and getting your ears washed. Yet I think, because it was the only fountain there was, at the only time we truly needed one, that everyone still lined up day after day.