The United States: the home of the free and the brave, where healthcare and living costs are infinitely more affordable than in the overcrowded cities in China. Now, instead of working at seventy to continue providing for his family, GongGong can finally retire to a quiet life in the Houston suburbs where he has access to many close friends and family. He has lived an exemplary life, I think. He is what I strive to be, someone without greed and with only compassion for his family. His appreciation for his life, no matter how difficult it was, only furthers my point. But the seven-year-old me was unaware of all the hardships he experienced to finally be able to reap his rewards.
My legs swing in a forward and backward motion. I’m seated on the counter, next to GongGong. His square butcher knife lies bloodied and forgotten as he cleans up the slashes and dots of blood currently in the midst of staining our white marble island countertop brown. On the wooden cutting board a few feet away from me is a chicken, a dead chicken. It’s defeathered and its legs sprawl lifelessly, assembled in a row of drumsticks, thigh pieces, wings, and then the breast. GongGong is using the head and bones to boil a chicken broth in the cast iron dutch oven, clad with more aromatics than I’ve ever seen in my life.
“XinXin, please find the right caps for all the spices that I just used.” He speaks Chinese to me as he doesn’t speak any English.
“But—” I whine, still perched on the counter.
“No buts, if you have the time to watch me chop the chicken up into little pieces, then you have the time to be doing something more productive.”
“Meanie,” I mutter under my breath. He’s referring to the twenty bottles of spices resting next to the toaster oven, all with open caps. He ordered me to cap every spice. Looking back, I made a huge deal about it, when it really only took me about ten minutes. The simmering broth sits on the gas stove. A steady blue flame burns under the black pot, releasing the palatable aroma of star anise, cloves, garlic, ginger, and chives with the fresh scent of lemon juice and lemon zest.
In our Instant Pot, GongGong has me dump all the ingredients of our congee into the pot. Mushrooms, red beans, mung beans, ginger, sweet purple yams, and shredded, boiled chicken are dumped haphazardly into the large pot by yours truly. Usually, he pours each ingredient individually to avoid the merging of flavors before he starts the slow cooker, but as a seven-year-old with zero cooking experience, I did not know that.
As the broth stews, we start on the Youtiao, a Chinese-style fried dough commonly eaten with congee in the mornings. Its golden brown crispy outside pairs perfectly with the tearable, soft inside, displaying more holes than a well baked French pastry. I roll out our overnight dough into strips, preparing it for frying as the vegetable oil in the wok heats up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Hurry up! The oil will start coming after you and spray hot sparks at you! You need to pick up the pace, XinXin!” GongGong rushes me and my last two Youtiao are misshapen beyond recognition. They look more like beignets than the long strip of dough it should look like.
“I’m trying! I’m trying! Stop rushing me!” I huff in anger, my right foot stomps on the tiled floor twice. I hand him the questionably shaped Youtiao, and he slides them down the side of the wok, into the hot bubbling oil. As the dough hits the oil, it sprays up into the air, causing a little screech to escape my mouth as I quickly back away in fear of the splatter hitting my body.
He has me on vegetable slicing duty, and I run over to the cutting board where a bundled up bunch of scallions patiently waits. I stand, perched on a little stool while looking over the cutting board and start slicing diagonally. I’m actually quite good at slicing vegetables, so I make quick work of the green onions. I separate the whites and the greens and announce to my grandpa, “I’m done!” He gives no response, only a noncommittal grunt as he looks over my work. He looks down at me with a disappointed shrug and my offense cannot be overstated. My gasp is louder than all the cooking ingredients in their respective pots, and I look back over my work. Nevermind, it actually does kind of suck… But I did my job. Why is he not more proud of me?
Beep. Beep. Beep. The timer goes off, signaling that the boiled broth is ready by the time he’s done scolding me with his eyes. He lifts the lid and a puff of steam escapes from the crack. An impatient puff of breath also escapes me as I start to get tired. Tired of the waiting, tired of the constant nagging, tired of feeling incompetent in the face of my elder. My elder, who I look up to so much, my elder who I want to be so desperately. Someone born in a different country, born to the horrible circumstances surrounding the cultural revolution in China.
And yet, even in those conditions, he thrived. He went to the best university in China, TsingHua, and went on to be a physics professor in his hometown. He met my grandma and had my mom. They lived a humble life, until my mother was twenty-three and decided to move to London with two cents to her name. She built herself a path unimaginable to others. She allowed herself to flourish and thus, allowed my grandparents to move to the United States.
After another round of scolding, as I don’t properly peel the Bok Choy that we were going to stir fry, I break down. “GongGong, I am trying! Don’t you see how hard I’m trying? To please you, to make you proud? I just want you to be proud of me. Please, be proud of my accomplishments and stop trying to undermine them because you lived a harder life! I don’t care. I get it, you were a teacher, you had a child, you worked for fifty years, but does that truly matter? Because you have retired, you’re an old man now. I’m the one who has to live my life.”
I storm off upstairs into my room and slam the door behind me. Weeping on my bed, I can only think back to the seconds of yelling and the deafening silence afterward.
My anger throughout this process is an emotion I regret until this day. My GongGong spent so much of his precious, limited time with me making congee instead of spending his time doing what I thought he loved more: watching TV, having tea with friends, chatting with his family. He spent his time doing things with me. But as a seven-year-old, I did not understand that; I thought I deserved all the time in the world.
My room is a mess. The rose pink walls are pushing in on me. I don’t know what to do. My desk sits pushed away and forgotten. Sheets and sheets of schoolwork and other papers fly off my rainbow desk. As I throw my stuffies at the desk lamp, the wind picks up and swirls my papers around. It only works to further anger me as I think about having to clean this mess up.
An hour later, a soft knock on my door rouses me from my sob-fest. I sniffle as I open the door. No one is outside, but a bowl of steaming hot congee is on a white tray. The congee is a pale white color, decorated by two Youtiaos and a touch of scallions and sesame seeds. It smells like the chicken broth I’ve come to love, and tastes like home. The spices burst in my mouth like bubbles of steaming hot pockets within the rice porridge. Beside it is a yellow post-it note written in his sloppy English letters that he most certainly traced using his shaky, rough hands, strung into a single sentence, “I hope you enjoy your creation.”