July232009
7/23/09 - Grandma’s Zongzi
I sat with my father and my sister at lunch, unwrapping the zongzi grandma had mailed to us. Inside each, she had stuffed the perfectly cooked sticky rice with meat, shitake mushroom, dried shrimp and duck egg yolks. Our apartment was quickly saturated with the aroma of steamed bamboo leaves and their savory fillings.
There are some childhood favorites I never grew out of. This, is one of them. And still like a child, I’m convinced that zongzi is only properly made when my grandmother makes it.
The other day, my father said as we ate,
when I was walking out of the building, a little girl ran towards me and sped right past. At the bottom of the stairs, I noticed a little boy waving goodbye to her. He kept waving after her, though she didn’t turn once to look back at him.
He waited till she disappeared out of sight, before jogging ahead. He didn’t go too far though. Something made him stop and he turned in my direction. When our eyes met, he smiled as if we were old friends.
I thought he might have mistakened me for someobody else.
But then, he started walking back towards me, and as I kept moving forward, he began to follow me.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him.
Shyly, he told me he was frightened by the possibility of stray dogs.
“But,” I paused, “Didn’t you just walk this way to take your friend home?”
He nodded.
“She’s scared of the dogs too, so I walked her home, but now,” he said very seriously, “I need a companion back.”
Amused, I let him trail along.
We walked a while before he suddenly screamed, “Watch out!” and burried his face in my back. I looked around but didn’t see anything.
“Oh,” he said sheepishly when I told him so,
“It might have been a mouse then.”
The little hero, My father laughed as he concluded the story,
If only the girl knew how much courage it took him.
(I just realized my mother had blogged the exact same story, but she must have heard it at a different time, and we certainly have our different styles.)
***
It’s been a week since I’ve moved back to Taiwan. Living here is a whole different story from vacationing here. There are alot of things I am not familiar with. Happily, there’s excitement in the new and every day I am finding more ground.
Two days ago, I found an apartment nearby and signed the lease that very night. Yesterday, I opened a bank account and also got a new phone.
For every contract I sign, I need to put down my Chinese name, which I haven’t used for the longest time. I write slowly, stroke by stroke, trying to make all three characters even on the line. So far, my efforts have all sadly resembled a third grader’s attempt to copy words beyond her understanding.
***
What’s your Chinese name? You asked.
As soon as I told you, you asked if I could draw the characters for you.
I laughed, secretly hoping the laughter can carry us over to the next conversation. My Chinese name, oddly enough, is almost a stranger to me. I didn’t use it, no one called me by it, and up until now, the signature had not been needed.
But you insisted, handing me a handbound notebook,
giving me its first page.
Here? My name?
Your Chinese name, you said again, and I saw that you were serious.
I gave you my best. One day, I would write these three characters in the matter-of-fact way people write their own names. But for now, this was as good as it gets.
Your eyes shone nevertheless. You wanted to know the proper order of every stroke. I watched with surprise as you began to practice my name in the space below. That surprise quickly turned into alarm as you became better and better at the replication. I had to stop you before you put
me to shame.
Drawing, you called the act.
I find your choice strangely moving.
Tell me, did you foresee that I would be across the world weeks later, signing my first contracts, seeing our moment in every stroke I draw?
***
Nowadays, I carry a signature stamp with me - as all Taiwanese do - to seal the agreements I make. My clothes, I hang dry. The older people whom I know through my parents, I call aunts and uncles out of respect. The tap water here, I should not drink before boiling or filtering. Although, I have forgotten this more than a few times.
