Do you have yours hot or cold?
Every day, we eat. Whether it’s picking from a spread of three dishes to eat over rice with family or stuffing a bodega bagel in your mouth while speed walking to catch the train or sitting alone at home over yesterday’s leftovers, the ritual to fuel our body has been ingrained into our muscle memory. Breakfast, lunch, then dinner—three markers that move us from one day to the next. Checkpoints of survival that test whether we make it to the next day. For many, these checkpoints are exactly that—tasks that need to be checked off. A chore repeated every single day with no cause for celebration.
Yet, even then, is not surviving to the next day, through that meal, a cause for celebration? We survived another day. Every time we eat, in a way, we are asserting, “I want to continue living.” Food fuels our body to function properly to ensure our physical survival. So, when someone else feeds us or eats alongside us, are they not also asserting, “I want you to continue living”?
When I was young, we lived in the basement of our grandparents’ house. Every night, we would wind up the stairs to the kitchen to the spread of dishes laid out on the oval wooden table. To my right, my Ngen Ngen (grandma) would open up the rice cooker and duck out of the way of the cloud of steam that erupted from its mouth. Gripping the rice scooper with her gentle, wrinkled hands, she would stir up the rice, orchestrating clouds of steam and an aroma so familiar that I only knew it to mean 食飯 — sik fahn!
Literally translated in Cantonese, 食飯 means “eat rice.” But, it means so much more than that. When dinner is ready, “食飯”. When all the dishes have found their place on the table, “食飯”. When every guest has found their place at the table, “食飯”.
She would scoop a small bowl for each of us and we would all take our place around the table, around the dishes those same gentle, wrinkled hands labored over far before they took on the mouthwatering senses that were now spread in front of me. Always the last to sit down, after finally scooping a bowl of rice for herself, Ngen Ngen would slowly ease herself into her chair, look around at us, nod her head, and say, “食飯”.
Ngen Ngen comes from Toishan in China and speaks the Toisan dialect. As a child who already would barely speak Cantonese, the language my parents tried to speak with us at home, I went through my entire life with Ngen Ngen not understanding the words that came out of her mouth, except for those two words—食飯. Instead, our language consisted of her reaching her chopsticks slowly across the table to pick up a piece of 蘿蔔糕, turnip cake (my favorite), and dropping it on top of my rice. It consisted of her unwrapping one of her homemade 糉, sticky rice dumplings, and splitting half for me. It consisted of her handing me the small bowl of rice and me cupping the bowl and her hand with both of my own hands and giving a soft squeeze. It consisted of her walking all the way down the stairs to our family bedroom with a bowl of cut peaches for us kids to munch on while we laid on the floor, finishing our homework. It consisted of her looking right at me from across the wide banquet table and pointing at the sweet red bean soup that she knew was my favorite dessert, for me to take a bowl first.
Every gesture towards food was luscious with affection. Without words, we exchanged a love and care that I still have trouble finding the words for. It’s a sensation rooted in the depths of my body’s memory that bubbles to the surface at even the slightest whiff of steamed rice or the softness of a bite of turnip cake or the sweet aroma of red bean soup that my stomach will always have room for, no matter how full I am from dinner.
Yet, however vivid memories are, they will always be abstract—bodily memories and emotions that can never be restored to their original shape. At the smell of steamed rice, I can always turn to my right and expect Ngen Ngen to be painted in steam, but it won’t be her gentle, wrinkled hand that I’ll be accepting the bowl from anymore. I can learn to wrap my own sticky rice dumplings, but it’ll be my own young, inexperienced hands fumbling over the bamboo leaves, still learning which side folds first to create the triangular cocoon that held my heart as tenderly as the sticky rice dumpling it embraced inside its leaves. I can fill my own home with the sweet aroma of red bean soup, but, this time, I’ll be the one pointing excitedly for my roommates and friends to try my favorite dessert. Yet, in every one of these moments, the memory of her and her love come washing over me, like the cloud of steam from the rice cooker—a warmth that I can feel, but can’t touch.
The closest I can ever get to her now is in these moments of sharing food, yet the roles have switched. Having been on the receiving end of my Ngen Ngen’s love and care through food all my life with her, I now find myself where she was all my life—handing a bowl of rice to my loved ones, unwrapping and splitting a homemade sticky rice dumpling with my roommates, watching my friends slurp red bean soup and come back for their second and third bowls.
Every dish tells a story. A story of life, of love, of survival, of thriving. A story that can so easily be lost in its repetition and mundaneness. But, it’s through these rituals that our body remembers the sensations that come with the everyday acts of survival that move us to the next day. And just like with a sip of red bean soup, only that person will know whether it feels hot or cold.
Everyone has a favorite dish. Cherish the dish, cherish those around you. Ngen Ngen may be gone now, but the taste of her love remains. And so do I.
About Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan
Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan is a Chinese-American writer, facilitator, and community builder who believes in the reciprocal power of stories and community. Born and raised in the Bay Area, she now finds herself feeling at home in New York. Her mind is constantly overstimulated, so you’ll often find her dancing with her eyes closed under the disco ball, gazing off into space, or meticulously folding dumplings.