Not Another Chicken Soup
A personal memoir about my relationship with my paternal grandfather and his Fuzhou red wine chicken soup after my great-grandmother passed away. This piece grapples with grief and a nostalgic dish. It’s accompanied with a narrated video feature.
Not Another Chicken Soup
It starts with a dream of my great-grandmother, and I’m reminded of my rippling grief. It comes in waves, in the most unsuspecting way. I see a robust and able-bodied woman, unaccompanied by her cane in her right hand. She’s comfortable in her modest home in Fuzhou, China. There’s an innate sense of belonging. She’s strong and standing tall for her petite stature. Her ears are embellished with small gold hoops. Her smooth face is framed with caramel, oval glasses. My eyes, the eyes of an incorporeal bystander, gaze at her short, jet black hair. It glistens under the sheen of the mid-afternoon sunlight filtering through the kitchen window. There are no signs of aging. No streaks of ashen hair like how I remembered her at 92.
I have no memories of her cooking, but in my dream, I catch her as she is preparing a family meal for my boyish Grandpa and his four siblings. It’s surprisingly quiet for the number of children she has. No chatter. No bickering. The silent hum from the gas stove flutters through the house. She’s heating up a small pot of water which must be cold because it’s still. Hovering over her, I notice her hands: slender and agile. I watch as she washes the bunch of scallions and cuts them at a slant. She starts gutting a fish to steam, and this is when the details get hazy. There’s a lapse in my trance.
As hard as I’ve tried, I cannot remember the specifics—the fragrant smell in the kitchen, the way she holds a knife, the ingredients on the cutting board, the kind of fish she eviscerates, and the dishes on the dining table. My vision blurs, and my great-grandmother slips away from me. The ringlets of loss swell and pulsate. It all fades as I wake up. I cannot tell you more than that.
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Let me tell you about my Grandpa. He’s a simple and predictable man, ritualistic in nature. Every birthday, I’m greeted by a warm, ceramic bowl with floral accents, steaming with Fuzhou red wine chicken soup at the kitchen table. It’s a staple, a blessing, and an annual rite of passage. No matter how old I’m getting, Grandpa continues to make this soup. It serves as an unspoken guarantee between the two of us: the soup promises to nourish my growing body, welcomes a new age, and leaves me feeling whole.
I don’t know where Grandpa gets his whole chicken for the soup. In my imagination, he is driving his silver Toyota Sienna into Brooklyn or Manhattan Chinatown, depositing quarters in a parking meter, and walking to a crowded Chinese butcher shop where the vendors speak loudly at him. A day before my birthday, in the middle of January, he’s wearing his burgundy North Face puffer jacket, black slacks lined with fleece, a grey stitched wool cap, and a pair of worn out leather gloves.
He asks the butcher for a whole chicken, head and all, in Fujianese. The butcher proceeds to put the naked, featherless chicken in a translucent bag where he ties a knot and slaps a price tag on it. It’s passed off to my Grandpa who pays for it at the checkout line with cash and brings it home.
The routine begins when Grandpa takes the chicken out of the plastic bag, rinses it under cold water, and plucks away the remaining feather quills. Grandpa’s grip on the Chinese cleaver is familiar and acquainted. He has the weathered hands of an immigrant chef who opened his own Chinese American restaurant to support his family. They’re skilled and age-spotted with freckles, not to be underestimated. It unfolds from here.
He starts by removing the neck followed by the head which gets thrown out. The knife portions the chicken into two halves, slides down the rib cage, and cuts right through the bone. Inside the cavity, he finds a golden yellow ovary. The bird gets broken down further as he dissects it into one inch pieces.
Our ignited stove gently murmurs the same hum from my dream. The oil in the wok hisses as the cooking chopsticks stir in the salt and ginger. In Grandpa’s kitchen, measurements do not exist. In goes a generous amount of hong zao (red wine lees) and a large pour of shaoxing rice wine. The waft of the mixed smells teases my nose. The chopped chicken gets tossed in. Boiling water from a large pot is added to the wok, only to be transferred back to the pot after it comes to a shimmer.
I’ve seen him assemble other ingredients for the soup before. The dried shiitake, wood ear mushrooms, and tofu skin: soaked at room temperature for 24 hours in advance. The hard boiled eggs: peeled at the dinner table while Grandpa catches up on the latest Chinese drama show. I can recount this process from my recollection with no doubt because it’s unforgettable and indelible.
What I would give to relive my dream of my great-grandmother. To stitch together the gaps in my memory. To make something metaphysical palpable. To commemorate her and her existence. I would’ve paid more attention, listened more closely, and clasped onto more details. More, more, and more. I cannot help, but to feel like I could have done more. But it’s more than enough when Grandpa lovingly invites me to the stove and answers all of my childlike, inquisitive questions about his cooking techniques and methods.
I could watch him for hours. Observe how he fills the kitchen space. Commit his actions and mannerisms to memory. In these thoughtful acts of preparation, tangible moments grounded in reality, I feel the most connected to my Grandpa.
On the morning of my 21st birthday, a month after my great-grandmother passed away, I found myself searching for her and her cultural influence in every spoonful of Grandpa’s soup. Perhaps my search is futile. Perhaps it’s a mechanism of filling a void, of never knowing my great-grandmother deeply enough. But I know, with confidence, that she passed on her food traditions to my Grandpa.
When I think about what binds us together, in my dreams or real life, it’s this common thread, this transcendent string of birthdays and occasions where we celebrate another year of life and another year of customs through this chicken soup. And this, this is enough to make me feel an everlasting closeness to my Grandpa and my great-grandmother, in whatever dimension we visit and see each other. Forever and endlessly.