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Excerpts | The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen New Year's Foods & Traditions Three generations of the Young family. Canton, China, circa 1934. Even today, when I vist my parents at Chinese New Year's I awake on new Year's morning to find two tangerines, two oranges, and a pair of lucky money envelopes, lysee, by my pillow---all auspicious symbols of good luck. As a child, I could anticipate finding these as dependably as I could a gift from the tooth fairy when I lost a tooth. Lysee are beautiful small red envelopes with money tucked inside, given to children and family members by elders. The amount of money varies, depending on the generosity of the giver, but most Chinese place a dollare in each envelope. The envelopes are ancient expressions of of long life, gratitude, peace, and blessings. The color red is a symbol of happiness and good luck. Lysee are also traditionally given on birthdays and weddings. The New Year's Eve meal is called tuan neen, or the uniting of family for thanksgiving. It is the most important meal of the two-week New Year's celebration and by custom the immediate family gathers for dinner at home. Every family's meal is slightly different but shares the tradition of being designed around meaning-ladened foods. Traditionally, eight or nine courses are served because both are lucky numbers; eight sounds like the word for prosperity in Cantonese, and nine means long lasting. In China, a fish must be served with its head and tail intact to properly signify a favorable beginning and end for the New Year. From the Chinese perspective, to be a whole person one must have a good start and a happy ending in all aspects of life, and eating a whole fish is the epitome of this sentiment. A whole chicken also symbolizes a proper beginning and end to the year and the wholeness of life on earth. Clams or scallops, which have a shape similar to that of coins, represent wealth and prosperity. Roast pig signifies purification and peace, and oysters and lettuce represent good fortune and prosperity. Some families favor a sweet-and-sour pork dish because the Cantonese word for sour sounds like the word for grandchild. A fancy soup like shark's fin or bird's nest is said to be esteemed for its rarity and delicacy. Lobster represents the life and energy of the dragon. Luxury foods, such as squab, snow pea shoots, hearts of bok choy, shrimp, abalone, and crabs, have become a part of the tradition for some. And, of course, there must be steaming rice. Finally, the fish should always be served as the last course. It is essential to prepare more than enough fish, so that some of it remains on the platter at the close of the New Year's Eve dinner. This symbolizes taking a reserve of food, or surplus, into the New Year, and is another play on the word yu, as it expresses fish, wish and having enough to spare. By eating this extra fish the folowing day for the New Year's dinner, the family ensures that the year to come will be rich and plentiful, which, in turn, is the greatest wish of the Chinese people.  REMEMBER CHINA, NAN CHUNG My older brother, Douglas, was born in San Francisco in 1950, just after the Communists took control of China. My grandfather, Gunggung, who resided in Shanghai, gave Douglas his Chinese name, Nan Chung, which means Remember China. He was intent that this first grandchild, born in a foreign land, never forget his family in China and always reflect on his family's long history of traditions. Indeed, none of his grandchildren would be born in China. Growing up in America, it was natural that Douglas and I behaved more like American children than Chinese. Our taste, our interests, our goals were all American. It is only now, after nearly 40 years, that I have begun to heed Gunggung's instruction to "Remember China." Nothing can more potently transport me across time and geography to the intimacy of my childhood home than the taste or smell of Cantonese homecooking. I naively set about writing my family's recipes with the thought that this project was solely about cooking. But with each question about a recipe came a memory from my parents, and with each memory I was led into a world I hadn't realized belonged to me. I listened to Mama reminisce about the weeks of preparation at her Grandmother's kitchen in Hong Kong before the New Year's feast, about the servants hand grinding rice to make flour for all the special cakes. My relatives also discovered photographs they had forgotten existed. One was a fragile sepia portrait of my Great Grandmother, her feet bound. I studied the image trying to grasp how I am related to this woman by blood, separated by only three generations. Another elegant studio portrait shows Baba's family, in Canton, in 1934; In it I see the young faces of my father and my uncles and aunts. Who were these innocent souls before they carved their life paths? Few photographs survived that other life, making its reality ever more ephemeral. This glimpse into my own history was but one of the treasures uncovered in the process of seeking recipes. A remarkable chapter opened in my relationship with my parents when I began recording our family's culinary heritage. Baba and Mama were at first reticent. Eventually, as I persisted, they slowly responded to my desire to learn. "Show me how you choose bok choy, how you prefer to stir-fry. Describe for me how it was in Shanghai and Canton when you were little. Did the water chestnuts taste like this or were they sweeter, the lotus root smaller, the tea more fragrant?" My parents, each in their own way, came to enjoy teaching me. Baba, whose routine is to monitor the stock market, while drifting in and out of cat naps, suddenly had a list of cooking lessons. Mama, ever the matriarch, was only too happy to instruct me on her highly specific principles for produce shopping, or to confer with my aunties on recipes I requested. I, in turn, was grateful for this new relationship. We talked not only about cooking but also of their recollections of life in China and in San Francisco's Chinatown at mid-century. Flattered by my interest, they stretched their memories, to unearth stories and reclaim their forgotten past.

Grandfather (Yeye) Young Suey Hay. Canton, China, circa 1902.

The Chinatown of my youth is barely evident in the Chinatown of today. In the 1960's it was a charming, intimate community inhabited by legions of old timers, known as lo wah kue, and locals. On any given day I would see Uncle Kai Bock sitting on a stoop on Washington Street, run into Auntie Margaret at her restaurant Sun Ya or stop to see Auntie Anna or Uncle Roy at Wing Sing Chong market. My Auntie Anna knew everyone who came into her store and I was convinced she was Chinatown's honorary mayor. To this day you can barely walk two steps with Auntie Anna without someone greeting her.

Every Friday night my family went out to eat. Whichever restaurant it was, Sai Yuen, Far East Cafe, Sun Hung Heung, Baba would stroll into the kitchen to order our food. This was no small feat. Restaurant kitchens were off limits to everyone but staff, but Baba sold liquor to all the Chinese restaurants and often the owner was the chef. Rejoining us he would tell us which dishes were the freshest and best to eat that day. I believe he must have observed many professional cooking secrets during these visits. I cannot recall ever eating in a restaurant where Baba didn't know the chef or owner. Baba seemed to know everyone. In those days Chinatown was the safest neighborhood in all of San Francisco. My cousins Cindy and Kim stayed with their grandparents in Chinatown on weekends and Gunggung would take them for a late night snack, siu ye, of won ton noodles, chow mein or rice porridge, zook, at 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning. Today, Chinatown is still the vital center of the Chinese community but the purity of its Cantonese soul is lost amidst the Wax Museum, McDonald's, Arab merchants hawking cameras on Grant Avenue and the mixture of non-Cantonese Asian immigrants who have since moved in. Still a few sights remind me of the Chinatown of old; the Bank of America on Grant Avenue with its classical Chinese architecture is the creation of my Uncle Stephen, an architect, as is the Imperial Palace Restaurant on Grant Avenue and the Cumberland Church on Jackson Street. On Clay Street my Uncle Larry has one of the oldest medical practices, and until this year my Uncle William and Aunt Lil's family had the oldest Chinese restaurant owned by one family, since 1919, Sun Hung Heung. My Uncle Donald is responsible for building the Kong Chow Benevolent Association and Temple on Stockton Street. This association serves the overseas Cantonese from two counties in China, Sunwui (where my father's family is from) and Hokshan (where Mama's family is from). My beloved Uncle Tommy was an artist and a natural cook; it has been a great loss that he passed away. I grew up enjoying many a meal at Uncle Tommy's and Auntie Bertha's home and I have asked my cousins Sylvia, Kathy, and David for their father's recipes. Alas, they are but a sweet memory for all of us. We partook of his specialties without ever thinking there would come a time when we couldn't taste the pleasure of his cooking and company. A great cook's recipes are a stamp as unique as fingerprints. My brother and I did not grow up sitting on the laps of our grandparents, hearing tales of their youth. It was not my parents custom to speak much about their life in China. They came to America for economical and political reasons, to seek a better future. I once asked Mama a simple question about her parents and was surprised that she couldn't answer me. "In China we only knew what our parents told us. We never asked personal questions out of respect for our elders." Occasionally my parents would share a story but for the most part they rarely divulged their remembrances. Perhaps too, Mama and Baba weren't ready to speak of their former life and we were too young to care or to know what to ask.

The year 1999 marks the 150th anniversary of the Gold Rush and the first major immigration of the Chinese people to America. Despite a century and a half of transplantation, Chinese cuisine remains alive and virtually unchanged--testimony to the strength of its traditions. The recipes my parents prepare today are not dramatically different from those of their parents and grandparents in China. Yet the Chinese of my generation stand at a crossroads--we maintain the desire to preserve our culinary heritage yet like most Americans have precious little time for cooking and honoring the old ways. We risk the loss of our great cooking rituals and along with them their spiritual enrichment. I have yet to find the web site for wisdom. The time I have spent cooking with my parents, listening to their stories and receiving their wisdom has allowed me to claim something of my identity and my own past. A knowledge of cooking passed from generation to generation, offers a gift to the soul, one that appeals to all of the senses and affirms our deepest connection to life. Do you have any stories to share? Write me at wisdom@graceyoung.com.

Grandfather (Gunggung) Fung Lok Chi with a younger brother standing by him. Canton, China, circa 1920.

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