My Asia trip diary + a Lunar New Year pop-up on January 28!
Over the holidays, we took the kids on an epic trip to Asia and visited my extended family for the first time in six years. Here's the first part of my trip diary.
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In the next several weeks, I’ll be writing primarily about my time spent in Asia. At the bottom of the newsletter is a list of upcoming events. Thanks so much for reading and hope to see you soon.
TRIP DIARY, PART 1
As the plane took off, headed across the Pacific Ocean, a huge weight lifted from my chest. It was mid-December and we were leaving behind San Francisco and all its heartaches on a long-planned vacation to Asia. Our first stop was a four-day stay in Tokyo, followed by 14 days traveling through China to visit my extended family, most of whom I hadn’t seen in six or more years.
When we booked the flights months ago, I was still in firefighting mode at Dumpling Club. By the time we departed on the trip, Dumpling Club was gone. Not “finished”--I’m full of ideas and the brand is still very much alive–but I had completed an asset sale for the kitchen in November and handed over the keys to a new owner on December 1st. For the first time in a very long time, I was responsible only for myself, my husband and my kids. Wow, what a feeling.
Once we returned to San Francisco, my head was full of images and words, observations and questions, and piles and piles of emotions—all tangled up in a big knot that’s been difficult to tease apart. At first I couldn’t even write; I just didn’t know where to start. After a few days of stewing in my thoughts, I began to compile lists: the top five things I ate on the trip, three perfect days in Tokyo and three equally perfect days in Shanghai, things to do in Linhai, observations about China compared to Japan… you get the idea.
I’ll share these lists eventually because they’re fun and interesting (I think? You tell me), but putting them together was less of a creative outlet and more of a forcing mechanism to get me to write. Once I put pen to paper and the words started flowing, what came out of me was a reflection on the five days we spent in Hangzhou and Linhai.
Hangzhou 杭州 is where my paternal grandmother lives, along with my dad’s sisters and half of my mother’s family. Linhai 临海 is where my mother grew up and it’s where the other half of her family currently resides. I spent a considerable amount of time in both cities as a child, moving between my grandparents’ homes and the homes of my many aunts and uncles. (In those early years, I stayed with relatives while my parents immigrated to Canada in search of a better life. That’s a story for another time.) Much of the food that influences my cooking is from these two cities.
Even though it’s been over thirty years since I’ve lived there, I call these visits to Hangzhou and Linhai “going home”. I think that’s largely because I’m subconsciously translating the Chinese phrase hui guo 回国. Hui means “to return”, while guo is more complicated. It can mean “country” or “land”, but implicitly means only the one country: China, a.k.a. the motherland. It’s hard to capture the depth of feeling behind the phrase, but I guess Google Translate is pretty good after all because it accounts for a lot of these nuances in its translation, “return home”.
That first night in Linhai, we gather in a rustic baoxiang 包厢 (private dining room) overlooking Ziyang Street 紫阳街, a long and narrow stone path through historic Linhai nestled at the base of the great Taizhou city wall 江南长城. While its architecture is distinctly Chinese, it has an atmosphere not unlike those found in the quaint villages dotting the South of France. Only pedestrians are allowed in the inner city, with parking lots stationed outside the wall. The buildings have been lovingly restored and preserved for their historical significance, outfitted with street-level souvenir shops and a wide range of eateries. It’s a clean, smart street and I can sense my family’s pride in sharing its development. My uncle turns to me to say that when my grandmother moved here in 1949 from the countryside, it was the biggest street she’d ever seen.
Soon, dishes start to arrive from the kitchen. My mother says that 90% of these delicacies can’t be found anywhere else. The first thing I bite into is a flaky mai bing 麦饼. A sort of cousin to the scallion pancake, but as thin as a crepe, simultaneously pliable and flaky and stuffed with a still-thinner layer of filling. We’re served two different types of mai bing: one with eggs and herbs and the other with preserved mustard greens 梅干菜. Next comes fresh, local tofu 白水洋豆腐, with the distinctive smoky flavor that I associate with “home”, chunks of boiled taro in a savory sauce, and a seafood geng 羹. I have no idea how to describe geng–I guess it’s sort of like chicken pot pie filling without the pie crust, a cornucopia of ingredients typically thickened with rice flour. I quickly down an entire bowl. Mai you zi 麦油脂 is brought out, a burrito-style wrap filled with different vegetables, but my sister and I quickly pass it over since we know it won’t measure up to my aunt’s homemade version. Then there’s a black chicken soup in a stock so rich, it’s more like a consommé, a steaming plate of dried (and rehydrated) bamboo, trays of rice dumplings, sweet fermented rice 甜酒酿 and black rice mochi 乌饭麻糍 that’s been rolled up with red bean paste like a Swiss roll. As we’re eating, we toast to each others’ health and happiness in rapid succession, the room exploding in noise every few minutes.
The kids don’t eat much. Between jet lag and all the unfamiliar faces, it’s a lot for them, so they sit at a separate little table on one side of the room and munch on mai bing while playing on our phones. As the dinner starts to wind down, my husband nudges me and mouths, “Look.” And over my shoulder, I see my cousin pulling up a chair to my kids and the three of them take a few selfies together. My cousin sends the photos to our family WeChat group and their goofy grins are so sweet that my heart threatens to burst.
That was the best part of the trip: seeing the instant bond that my children had with our extended family, all my aunts, uncles, cousins and their children and my one remaining grandmother. The kids slid into their places in the family so seamlessly. They greeted each family member by name, ran after their cousins with laughter and games, and stepped easily into warm embraces at the end of the night. These people were strangers to them and at the same time, they weren’t strange at all.
I have always worried that my children wouldn’t know their roots. We are so far removed, geographically and culturally, that in some ways I think I created Dumpling Club just to navigate my own identity and to help my kids navigate theirs. So you can imagine my intense relief to arrive in China and see that we, in fact, belonged. Of course my kids didn’t speak the language that well and they didn’t understand many of the unspoken cultural rules (which I can barely manage myself), but I have only to look at the photos to know that they know who their family is.
If you ask them what they remember about the trip, neither says a thing about the food. They talk about Shanghai Disney and trains and “oh mama, the toilet seats in Japan were so warm”, haha. But they also talk about meeting Tai Nai Nai and climbing the Great Wall and playing basketball with their cousins. I love that they loved the trip and can’t wait to plan the next one. We’re definitely not waiting another six years before going back home again.
UPCOMING EVENTS
SAVE THE DATE: Dumpling Club is celebrating Lunar New Year at Wave Collective on Sunday January 28! Join us for an afternoon of art and food, featuring 7 Bay Area Asian-American artists and a menu of Lunar New Year treats. See you there!! 663 Haight St in SF on Sunday 1/29 from 12-6pm. More details to follow.
I’m teaching noodles classes on February 2 and February 28 with my friend JiYoung of ParksKitchen. Classes are sold out, but please join her mailing list or follow her on Instagram for future events!
Many of you have asked about my music performances which I’m a little shy about… but here goes!!!
My next concert with the San Francisco Civic Symphony is on Sunday January 21 at 3pm at the Herbst Theatre. We’re performing an all-American program including Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring local pianist Elizabeth Dorman. Free admission, suggested donation $10-20.
For a much smaller, more intimate performance, my quartet is participating in a casual chamber concert on Saturday February 17 at 3pm at Bethany United Methodist Church. We open the program with Mozart’s Divertimento in F Major. Free admission.
FEEDBACK
I would love to hear from you. What did you think of this latest newsletter? Should I keep sharing personal essays? Are there other topics you’d like me to write about? Recipes you’re dying to have? Let me know!
Xoxo Cathay