‘Time to eat,’ Auntie An-mei happily announces, bringing out a steaming pot of the wonton she was just wrapping. There are piles of food on the table, served buffet style, just like at the Kweilin feasts.
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
On Sunday mornings in Brisbane, my sister and I would beg to be taken out for dim sum. I remember so clearly the large dining room, the smell of the jasmine tea, the heavily starched white tablecloths covered in paper, the steamed pork dumplings that we ordered each time without fail, and the lazy Susan in the centre of the table that we’d spin as fast as we dared while mum wasn’t looking. If we were lucky, our cousins or granny would join us too. The more people around the table, the more dishes we’d be able to taste.
The best time to visit was around Chinese New Year; which (now that I’m on the other side of the world) falls late in winter, just before spring starts to return. Three floors below the restaurant, in Chinatown, strings of firecrackers were on sale, a giant puppet dragon danced through the street, and we’d stop and get tiny panda biscuits or fish-shaped pastries from the packed shelves of the Chinese supermarket. On the night itself, our local Chinese restaurant, though smaller than the huge one in town, would set off firecrackers on the street – the sound and the smoke would bring us onto the deck of my dad’s house, from where we could watch the sky light up.
To this day, a generous spread of Chinese food on the table remains an incredibly welcome sight. For the most part it’s not fast food, but the kind that asks for a bit of your time. It’s also food that benefits from a community behind it – a production line of people wrapping, folding and sealing the dumplings closed. I tend to make it when I have a big crew of people around. It’s food that makes me miss my family, and the camaraderie and companionship of cooking around Mum’s granite kitchen island. It’s why I adore Amy Tan’s collection of Chinese-American women in The Joy Luck Club; whatever their history, they continue to gather together to play mah jong, and to cook and eat dishes that are best shared.