Voices on the New Diasporas - an MIT student journal
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A Bowl of Noodles
by Jennifer Chu
It was 11:30 pm and I found myself hovering in front of the stove making a huge bowl of noodles. No, I wasn’t just boiling water to make instant cup noodles; I was making genuine beef noodle soup with fresh, thick noodles, large chunks of real beef, and some chopped leafy vegetables in a MSG-free seasoned soup. And no, I was not making noodles because of a late night hunger pang. Rather, I still felt the eight-inch sub I had eaten an hour ago and the slice of cake half an hour ago, and I loathed the thought of eating another bite. Yet I was still making noodles.
My mother had called me twenty minutes earlier, wishing me happy birthday, asking me how I was celebrating the night. I had gone out with my friends the night before, leaving me with an unbelievable amount of unfinished work to do, so I told her I was celebrating with my problem sets. She paused for a moment. I knew she did not get my joke and was trying to process what I meant literally, since she is an extremely seriously-minded person. Then I could picture her frowning slightly as she finally replied, “Well…you have to celebrate in some fashion. You cannot just do work for your birthday. Have you eaten noodles today?” I hadn’t. Eating noodles on birthdays is an old Chinese tradition that my mom and her mother adhere to adamantly. No matter what happens, my family always eats noodles in some manner on our birthdays. Sometimes, I would be shoved a mouthful of noodles at 6:28 in the morning, trying not to choke as I ran out the door for school. Now I am in college, two hundred miles away from my mom, but I still felt as if I was being force-fed birthday noodles. I had eaten a lunch of stir-fry he-fen, a dish made of inch-wide rice noodles. Yet this was unacceptable. According to my mom’s standard of birthday noodles, I had to have real noodles: wheat noodles with soup, noodles that took more than boiling water and three minutes to make. So I was using forty-five precious homework minutes to cook noodles I was too full to eat.
Why did I have to eat noodles on my birthday anyway? It is just some ancient tradition passed down to us. When I sit down to think about it, the noodle-eating is probably representative of longevity since noodles are very long, a way to wish the eater a long life. But that was definitely not what went through my mind as I got a messy tangle of noodles shoved into my mouth.
There are so many traditions and holidays that I celebrate but don’t understand the greater historical significance of. As a child, I loved these special days because of the food, the presents and the days off from school. I wondered why I couldn’t make up my own holidays and why the number of holidays never increased from year to year. Perhaps it is because of the increasing diversity of influences in people’s lives today. It is simply too hard for one event to have enough impact on a significant portion of the population to justify its recognition as a national holiday.
I remember looking forward to the Chinese holiday, Duan-Wu-Jie, set on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. The day before the holiday, I would be in the kitchen all day helping my mom make sweet red bean or pork-filled zhongzi’s, triangular-shaped rice mounds wrapped in fragrant bamboo leaves. I would scrub the bamboo leaves clean in warm water, breathing in the calming aroma of the leaves. Then I would watch my mom skillfully wrap one zhongzi after another, waiting until she reached the last of the rice. Immediately, I would jump up and tilt the rice pot for her so she could scoop the last straggling grain into the final zhongzi. I would stand next to her on tiptoes watching her tie the final knot and ask, “When can I eat one?” I always got the same answer: “When they are done cooking in three hours.”
While I waited anxiously in the living-room for the zhongzi’s to cook, my mouth watering from the delicious aroma, I would watch the Duan-Wu-Jie festival on TV. There were dragon boat races in gaily painted boats with the bow in the shapes of gracefully arching dragon heads. The rowers were dressed in bright yellow, green and red costumes. Huge, six-feet wide, decorated drums would be cheering the rowers on, along with endless firecrackers. Sweet-scented decorative pouches would be handed out to children to wear around their necks, and many children had their face painted. I would run to my mom asking for one of those pretty pouches and for her to paint my face.
As a result, my impression of Duan-Wu-Jie was simply a day of festivities and zhongzi making and eating. It was not until much later, in Chinese school, that I learned the solemn origin of the holiday. There was a patriotic and loyal official named Qu Yuan who lived in the Chu Kingdom during the Warring States Period. The weak-minded Chu emperor listened to the rumors of corrupt officials, who were hindered by Qu Yuan's reforms, and exiled him. As a result, the kingdom deteriorated and its lands were progressively taken over by the other warring states. Disheartened by the condition of his homeland, Qu Yuan tied a stone to his chest and plunged into the river. When the local fishermen found out about this, they rushed on their boats to search for the deeply-respected Qu Yuan. When they could not find his body, they threw rice wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river so the fish wouldn’t eat his body. This event eventually became the Duan-Wu-Jie festival of today, with the festive dragon boat races honoring the fishermen and the tossing of rice morphed into the modern zhongzi-eating tradition. The festival I associated with mouthwatering food and fun had actually originated as a day to commemorate Qu Yuan and to remind people of their patriotic duties.
The Harvest Moon Festival is another major celebration my family partakes in. We would buy a variety of different-flavored mooncakes, ranging from the traditional lotus and red bean paste ones to the trendier pineapple or lichee ones. My brother and I would fight over the different flavored mooncakes, particularly the pineapple ones, and then huddle around the window of my parents’ bedroom to gaze at the moon. We would compete to see who could see the most interesting figures in the shadows of the moon.
But most significant for me, the Moon Festival marked the day that I received my first telescope. Noticing my interest in the moon and the stars, my dad decided to buy me a real telescope that allowed me to zoom close in to the dark spots of the moon and see what it really looked like— a compilation of craters and ridges. On the nights of the Moon Festivals with the full moon out, I would study the moon and chase after the stars with my telescope for hours while savoring the one pineapple mooncake I managed to snatch from my brother.
Yet in truth, the Moon Festival is meant to be a day for family gatherings and reunions. Family members, even those who were abroad, would rush back to congregate that night. They would sit together, enjoying each other’s company, and gaze at the full moon which had become whole just as the family had reunited as a whole. Yet all these deeper sentiments have been lost for me. With all the media influences and mass marketing of food and festivities, the meaningful historical origins of the holidays have been obscured and overlooked. For me, Duan-Wu-Jie is simply zhongzi eating and dragon boat racing day; Harvest Moon Festival is mooncake eating and telescope day; Chinese New Year’s is red envelope money day; Thanksgivings is turkey eating day; Labor Day is shopping day; and all the other one-day holidays are homework catch-up or relaxation days. Traditional holidays have lost their cultural significance on me. Their original significance is being overlooked and replaced by personal associations and the experiences each of us has of the holidays.
During my second month of living at college away from home, I had my first major Chinese holiday on my own. It was the Moon Festival and I had gone out earlier that week to buy some mooncakes for myself, particularly a few pineapple ones. The night of the festival, I pulled my chair next to the window, put my feet up on the windowsill and sat back munching on my horde of mooncakes while I peered at the moon, my eyes squinting to see better, sorely missing my telescope in the basement back home. I finished my first pineapple mooncake and pondered carefully the choices of my second mooncake, my selection no longer limited by my brother’s preferences. My gaze settled back onto the moon, and I wondered idly if my brother was still bothering to scope the moon for interesting figures without me there to compete with. Also, what were my parents up to? Were they also watching the same full moon right now just as I was? What kinds of mooncakes did they buy this year? Finally, I decided to call them up, asking my mom to save me a piece of mooncake in the freezer for the next time I come home from college.
The significance and the origins of the traditional holidays seems to be overlooked more and more today as people don’t bother to understand them. However, perhaps the meanings to the holidays are not entirely lost to the people. Maybe it just takes some more years of living and growing for people to gain the experiences necessary to recognize and appreciate the sentiment behind the holidays.
After simmering for another eight minutes, my noodles were finally done. It overfilled my biggest bowl, towering high above the rim. I sat it on my desk, watching the steam curl, tumble, and entwine together, and finally dissipate in the air. Then with a grin, I dug in. “Happy Birthday, Jennifer,” I thought to myself.
© 2007 MIT E-merging Journal
