Saturday, October 1, 2011

Waiting for Chinese

I'm at my favorite Chinese restaurant, waiting for my takeout order. I love this place, the Peking Chinese Restaurant next to the McDonald's in Redmond, WA.

(They're quick! It's ready!)

When Nickie was just four years old, I used to bring him here for lunch. He loved coming here. The waitress would seat us, all the while chatting to Nick as if she'd known him longer than his four years. 'Joyful Boy,' she called him.  Even when he was throwing a fit, even when he spilled the tea I'd poured and sweetened for him, even when he'd pushed rice off three sides of his plate, he was a welcome visitor there.  I haven't come here with Nick in a long while, but whenever he's with me as I'm picking up takeout, he'll say, "Can we stay here and eat, Mom, please?"  If Mike wasn't usually at home with a cold waiting for us, I'd like to say yes. 

We don't get Chinese food very often, but when Mike or I catch a virus, we crave hot and sour soup.  "It's the volatile oils," Mike will say as if I'd never heard him say that before.  We've been together long enough that we have these things we repeat to each other.  Most of the time they're lines from some old movie or a Seinfeld episode, but not always.  Isn't it awful how I can never think of those other phrases when I want to, like a good joke I'd heard that's just beyond my tongue? 

We always order the same thing at Peking, lemon chicken for Mike and beef and broccoli for Nick and I.  If we're too busy or tired, we'll order rice to go with it, but most of the time, whoever is at home will make sticky rice while the other picks it up. 

Here's what I think about when I take my one piece of lemon chicken, completely covered in sweet lemony goo, 'Would I even like authentic Chinese food?'  I know that this food that I'm eating isn't really a part of Chinese culture.  What I'm eating is an American twist on Chinese food and after all of these years of twisting, the turn away from authenticity has got to be complete.  The people that own and run my favorite Chinese restaurant speak and write the orders in Chinese.  I wonder what they eat at home.

Just before the summer Olympics in Beijing, Mike told me that he might be sent there for a couple of weeks on a business trip.  Now, Mike hates traveling, but I love going to new places.  So I checked to make sure our passports were up-to-date, asked Nick's principal for permission to take him out of school, and enrolled in a class for conversational Chinese.  I was going to be ready to go, no excuses. 

On my first day of class, I learned that Chinese is a challenging language to learn.  I figured out that it was easier for me if I thought of  it as singing songs, since calling your mother 'ma' could result in calling her a horse if your tone dipped the wrong way.  I managed to teach Nick to say "Ni hao.  Wo jao Nick!"  We both practiced the little things I managed to retain from week to week.  I have to tell you that learning a language at 51 is way harder than learning it in high school.  Even after managing a few conversational phrases, I'm embarrassed to say that neither one of us ever had the courage to lean on that counter at our favorite Chinese restaurant and say, "Ni hao!" 

Unfortunately, we didn't end up going to Beijing after all and though I was disappointed, it was a relief that I wasn't going to have to mangle their ancient language in front of people who knew and loved it.  I think about that sometimes, as I'm tasting Mike's lemon chicken, the dish that I'm sure has been mangled beyond recognition by any self-respecting person from Beijing.  Yet, I love cracking apart a new set of chopsticks and chowing down on an authentic Chinese-American tradition. 

Thank you for listening, jb

No comments:

Post a Comment