Homecoming Diary: Reunited at the Table, Only to Find We Never Went Far

by Posted on
Foodthink Says
Our memories of our mothers seem always bound up with food and care. Perhaps she was a brilliantly talented cook who remembered every family member’s likes and dislikes, soothing hearts with delicious meals. Perhaps she was no great cook, yet often buried herself in household chores, tending to the family as best she could. As our mothers grow old, we begin to cook for them, to tend them at their bedside, learning to recreate their domestic wisdom—and, as though roles had reversed, we come at last to understand the toil of motherhood and the weight of domestic labour.

In April this year, the author of this piece returned to her hometown in Chongqing to visit family, reuniting with Mum and Grandma. To mark this Mother’s Day, join us in reading her homecoming diary. And to every mother: may you be safe, well, and cared for.

4.3 Going Home

In late March and early April, the temperature in Beijing rises and falls, but the accumulated temperature in the soil and within the plants has finally reached its threshold. After months of no change, the bare branches at last send out leaf buds and flower buds—the Yulan magnolia first, the lilac following close behind. The air smells quite different. Thinking of Grandpa, who has just passed away, and Grandma, who made it through COVID-19, I bought a train ticket home and tucked a bottle of green plum cordial into my bag—cured last May by my own hand.

● During the Qingming Festival holiday, the metro and the trains are packed with people heading home. Luggage this size—who knows what’s stuffed inside.
● I slept through the night on the train, and it rained almost the entire way. The next morning, the train crossed the Yangtze at Fuling.

We arrived in Chongqing and stayed a few days while Mum finished collecting her medicine, then the whole family bought tickets to Fengjie to see Grandma. The high-speed rail from Chongqing to Fengjie takes barely under two hours and passes through Wanzhou; our plan was to stop there first to tend Dad’s mother’s grave, then carry on to Fengjie.

● Before a long trip away, Mum always tops up the water around the rim of the pickle jar. She is meticulous about it—she even stows the everyday ladle, spatula, and spice jars away in the cupboard so the dust can’t settle on them, cutting down the cleaning when she gets back.

IV. 10 Tomb-Sweeping

Qingming was over, and it wasn’t a weekend, so the public cemetery was deserted. Dad had bought a bunch of chrysanthemums, joss paper, and incense sticks, and walked quickly out ahead. I followed close behind, carrying a cloth bag stuffed with several kinds of fruit, snacks, a water bottle, and tissues. Mum walked slowly and trailed at the back. The afternoon was hot, the sun turning fierce—almost summery—and I, the kind of person who sweats easily, could smell myself going sour. Dad’s mother had been dead for eight years. I’d visited her grave three or four times but could never remember the exact spot; still, heading in roughly the right direction, I found it in no time—a headstone with only an epitaph, no photograph. We kept things simple: laid the flowers, lit the incense, burned the joss paper. As always, what I prayed for was personal peace and good health—and world peace.

It struck me that the last time I’d come to see her was five years ago. That time I’d brought a potted plant—narcissi, which she loved. This time there was no time to buy anything specifically for her, so on the spur of the moment I pulled all the peanuts and mandarins from the bag and arranged them before the headstone. I knew those were her favourites. Mum said, “Your grandmother doesn’t go in for apples or bananas,” so I held back.

4.10 Reunion

Just past four in the afternoon we were back on the high-speed rail; the train covered the journey to Fengjie in barely over thirty minutes.

● Grandma, photographed in January and April 2023.

After a whole day of travelling, every bone in my body ached. But the moment I stepped through Grandma’s front door and saw her sitting upright on the sofa, something in me unclenched at once.

It seemed Grandma had made out a figure from a distance and called out loudly, “Who is this?” I raised my voice to answer, and she recognised it straightaway: “It’s Linlin!”

Her right eye was completely blind, her left barely saw, and her hearing was poor, yet she spoke with a booming, full-bodied voice. Closer up, I could see her cheeks were full, her skin glossy. She rose from the sofa without a stumble and could walk a few paces unaided, no stick needed—nothing like the frail, languishing figure in a hospital bed at Chinese New Year. Two utterly different worlds.

Grandma’s back had long since curved beyond straightening, so she looked especially small. Yet she was remarkably robust; this had been the first hospitalisation of her life. At the start of the year the whole clan had been shuttling between the hospital and the house—the uncles took turns keeping watch at her bedside, while at home the youngest uncle’s wife and Dad took shifts cooking. By then Grandpa could no longer manage a single mouthful of food; even drinking water was a struggle. Grandma was in better shape and could still manage soft foods.

● January, in the hospital. Grandpa lay in bed; Grandma got out of bed to use the toilet, with Second Uncle and the youngest uncle each tending to her (left). Grandma insisted on holding the bowl and drinking her gruel herself (right).

After Grandma was discharged, the uncles took turns looking after her, and they also hired a carer to stay in the house—to guard against an accidental fall and to make sure someone was always with her when the others went out to run errands or do the shopping. Tough as nails, Grandma was equally stubborn in character; she hated depending on anyone. Her catchphrase was “I can manage” (that is, “I can, I can do it”).

Still, after a lifetime of putting up a front, she had at last begun to soften. The foods she’d always refused to eat because she was particular, she now ate without protest, because the doctor said she was malnourished.

● Grandma doesn’t like soup splashing onto her clothes at mealtimes, so before every meal Mum ties an apron on her, just like she used to tie a bib on me when I was small.
Mum and Grandma hadn’t seen each other in a month or two either, and the two of them huddled together, talking eagerly. Eldest Uncle called dinner. On the table sat a bowl of steamed pork with rice flour that Second Uncle had prepared in advance: the pork, a mix of fatty and lean, had been seasoned and marinated, then coated in rice flour and kept in the fridge, ready to be steamed whenever needed. Mum tucked several pieces of the fatty bits into Grandma’s bowl. I watched her eat with such relish that I helped myself to a few generous pieces of the lean too… my plan to skip a meal and work up an appetite went up in smoke. After a shower, I climbed into Grandpa and Grandma’s bed just past nine. Several people were sleeping in the room. Mum switched off the whirring washing machine and turned off the light.

I slept beautifully all night. Grandpa did not come to me in a dream.

4.11 Second Uncle

That morning, Second Uncle heard I was back in Fengjie and drove over all the way from the neighbouring county. He first took us to the public cemetery to visit Grandpa’s grave, then went home to cook.

● The dishes on the table weren’t prepared for me alone. Grandma—our self-anointed household head, whom we jokingly called “the one who refuses to step down”—sat at the table with a thoroughly solemn face and delivered her verdict: “This spread caters to old, middle-aged, and young alike.”
● A whole table of dishes, and the first thing I reached for with my chopsticks was the cold fish mint leaf salad.
● Grandma absolutely loves broad beans.
● How does Second Uncle make konjac shreds soak up so much flavour!
● Second Uncle went to the market specially to buy a live chicken and have it slaughtered on the spot. Just from the photo you can tell this was a proper free-range bird—one that had done its aerobics. The fat beneath the skin was paper-thin, the meat a deep colour, the fibres fine and silken. I so wished I could bring one like this back to Beijing.
In recent years the population of Grandma and Grandpa’s extended family has barely grown, the ageing severe, yet the number of chefs has swollen, each as good as the next. Still, the head chef is and has always been Second Uncle—no argument about it, and even Mum bows to the verdict. When I was small and told him I fancied lamb tripe, he went out and bought some and washed it himself. When my skin kept breaking out in sores and he heard that eating snake cleared the heat, he went all the way to the countryside to sort me out some snake.

4.12 Pig’s Snout

● Left: the road in front of the wet market gate, seen from the balcony of Grandpa and Grandma’s flat—photographed over the New Year holiday. Right: Mum exercising nearby, snapping a shot of an “Old Man Under the Tree.”

My relatives cook at home plenty, but they don’t refuse to eat out either, because there are always days when cooking just doesn’t feel right, when no one fancies anything in particular, and when honing your culinary skills demands more exploring and more tasting.

In greater Chongqing, it’s genuinely hard to hit a dud when eating out: people here are passionate eaters, particular about flavour, and a mediocre kitchen simply cannot survive. Still, apart from weddings, funerals and hosting visitors from afar, my family rarely sits down to a banquet. What counts as everyday fare is a bowl of noodles, rice noodles or wontons at a little local eatery, or a trip to a siu mei shop to have pig’s ears or pig’s snout sliced up and taken home to supplement the evening meal.

Downstairs from Grandpa and Grandma’s building there are several siu mei shops, and one has rave reviews across the whole city—even fussy Grandpa and Second Uncle give it the seal of approval. One night at the start of the year, past midnight, Mum got a phone call saying Grandpa was critically ill. She woke the lot of us; around three in the morning I stumbled downstairs, bleary-eyed, and passed that shop. I could see a lone figure inside sorting through the plates and bowls—no telling whether they’d just closed up or were gearing up to open.

Today Second Uncle is chef again. The table is already absurdly lavish, yet he still headed downstairs and had the shop slice up a portion of pig’s snout, specifically asking for the thinnest slices possible. Pig’s snout looks fatty, but it isn’t the slightest bit cloying on the palate—even I, a devoted vegetable lover, cannot resist the temptation.

● The siu mei shop downstairs—the digital clock on the wall, as the left photo confirms, tells us it was already open before seven.
● Pig’s snout sliced by Second Uncle at the siu mei shop downstairs.
Back in Beijing, I couldn’t stop thinking about that plate of pig’s snout. The pork down south simply can’t be matched up north, but the dipping sauce—well, that I could learn. So I asked Mum to go down to the siu mei shop and learn the trade’s secrets, while I experimented on my own: a base of sugar and vinegar got me in the right ballpark. I sent Mum a message, and she fired back a few voice notes over WeChat: “The reason this place’s dipping sauce tastes so good is partly that it uses Sichuan pepper powder, not Sichuan pepper oil. Think about it—oil floats on top of the water, so when you dip the siu mei, you pick up nothing but oil and miss all the other seasonings, the sugar, the vinegar, the soy sauce, those watery ones. Then it just tastes greasy and flat. With Sichuan pepper powder, that problem simply doesn’t arise.” In truth, Mum is the one who’s spent the longest time in the kitchen.

4.12 The Wet Market

Grandpa and Grandma’s flat sits right next to the county’s wet market. The surroundings aren’t exactly clean and rather noisy, but the convenience is unbeatable—short of anything, you just open the door, head downstairs, and it’s sorted in no time. It’s not just food, either: hardware, sundries, little clothing shops—it all lines up neatly. In a small mountain town the roads are narrow and the pavements narrower still; walking is all shoulders and elbows, no quickening your pace. My running plans went up in smoke, so I can only take a stroll whenever I fancy, casually browsing and asking after prices, burning a few calories in the process.

From a good way off you can smell the sizzling meat patties or griddled potatoes from the mobile stalls, and it’s genuinely tempting—but I eat so well at home that I truly couldn’t fit another bite. Wandering along always brings me back to the wet market; after all, it’s the most rewarding place to browse. There’s always a plant I can’t name, and all manner of vegetable sellers—somehow both familiar and strange.

● Along the road flanking the wet market, there are always some itinerant traders. Some swing a basket on their arm and walk back and forth; others set down their carrying pole, find a gap, and squat; still others park a little three-wheeler or a minivan at the kerb… Coming south this time of year, fresh new garlic and tender broad beans (fava beans) have just hit the market. Regardless of how big the stall, everyone’s head bent, shelling tender broad beans and peeling new garlic—hands never still.
● This person sits alone at the kerb in the middle of all the bustle—no hawking, just one basket of roots for soup. Sell out, and they pack up and go.
● One carrying pole, two wicker baskets, one steelyard, one straw hat—identical to thirty years ago.
● Pan-fried dumplings, griddled potatoes, tea eggs. I haven’t seen this kind of old-fashioned honeycomb coal-briquette stove in ages.
● The “sweet potato” I ate as a child is not what northerners call sweet potato. Its proper name is jicama, native to Mexico and Central and South America. You can eat it raw; the texture is like a water chestnut, with a clean, sweet flavour. I never would have guessed it’s actually a member of the legume family!
● The first time I noticed someone selling scallions this way, I thought it was to make life easy for home gardening enthusiasts, but it turns out it’s for those who only need the white part of the stalk. Right next to the scallions in the photo are “dried potato pieces”—potatoes dried in the sun, a method of preserving spuds I rarely see elsewhere.
● On the left is small garlic, also called wild garlic, which Dad adores. Chop it up, toss it with a few seasonings, and you’ve got a plate of relish to go with the meal. Dad also loves stirring some into vegetable tofu soup for extra flavour. So what is vegetable tofu? You grind soybeans, skip the filtering, bring it straight to a boil, stir in some chopped greens, and either drink it as it is or ladle it over rice.
● Fish mint roots and leaves. I prefer the ones on the right. Photographed in January.
● This tub of fermented glutinous rice is nearly sold out.
● The yellow stuff is maize paste—prepared the same way you’d grind soybeans.
● The wet market at New Year is richer still: all sorts of pig offal, already cleaned and ready, for anyone cooking the reunion dinner—just buy it and take it home to braise.
● At New Year, the butchers torch pig trotters and tails right on the roadside. Mum says the skin needs a good sear before boiling, otherwise it won’t turn out tender.
● At New Year, live chickens can even be set out for sale on the pavement.

I didn’t know where to look—everything I saw, I wanted to buy, yet I didn’t dare buy a thing, because I wasn’t the one cooking and I was afraid of causing a fuss.

In the end, I simply couldn’t bear to go home empty-handed. Mum had mentioned that “the pickle jar needs some more ginger,” and Second Uncle had said, “Young ginger’s a bit pricey these days—give it a little longer.” I reckoned young ginger couldn’t possibly be the wrong choice.

Back at the house, I peeled the young ginger, washed it, set it in the bamboo colander to drain, and carried it out of the kitchen and onto the table—afraid of it catching a smear of oil. Dad walked past, gave it a glance: “You didn’t pick this ginger well—the fibre’s a bit coarse.”

I was secretly delighted: at last, Dad had stepped from words on paper into the fine details of everyday life.

● In just a few years, Dad went from complete novice to a proper chef. This meal—the luffa dumpling soup and the blistered green peppers were especially good. Even the pig trotters Mum bought in were astonishingly delicious.

IV. 13 Farewell

Today I head back to Beijing. I’ve bought a midday train ticket—I just want one more proper home-cooked meal. First thing I packed the backpack: compared with the one I brought home, it’s gained a few wheat cakes, a couple of navel oranges, and the brown-sugar sachima that Grandma told Eldest Uncle over and over to buy for me.

After breakfast, I took my habitual stroll downstairs and spotted a basket carried by an old woman, full of very fresh fennel. No plastic bag needed—I bought a bunch and brought it home.

Mum and Uncle looked at it and said, “Good one—pop a little in the jar,” and Dad added, “We could pan-fry some bā bā with it.” For once I’d got it right—all three chefs were in agreement. (Note: bā bā—flat cakes or balls made from pounded glutinous rice or other grain powders, often mixed with chopped vegetables.)

● Leftover chicken soup from the day before, topped up with luffa, and drunk again.
● Stir-frying kidney calls for a generous amount of oil, fierce heat and rapid tossing—only then will the kidney turn out tender. The oil left in the wok, saved for boiling noodles, makes them especially fragrant.

Grandma’s mealtimes are usually rigid, but that day, to suit my schedule, lunch was pushed forward by an hour. Second Uncle doesn’t care for kidney himself, yet he stir-fried a plate specially for my farewell meal—perhaps remembering how much I loved it as a child. His skill in the wok was undimmed, but the pigs were different. We all sighed: the pigs of today are no longer the pigs of yore. In the old days, people fed pigs pig fodder and swill (leftover rice, dishes and soup); now they feed them commercial feed.

It was time to go. Grandma, who hadn’t set foot outside in ages, rose from the sofa and insisted on walking me to the door—no one could dissuade her. Mum leaned in and whispered, “Every time she and Grandpa see someone off, she likes to stand in that spot.” I nodded. “I know.”

● Left: the farewell photo Dad took as I said goodbye to Grandma this time. Right: in March 2015, I went home for a visit and was leaving Grandpa and Grandma. After I headed downstairs, I looked back—they were standing there watching me. I quickly fished out my phone and took this shot. Before, people used to stand at the rail on a steamer’s deck just like that, waving goodbye.

I could easily have caught a taxi to the high-speed rail station, but Second Uncle, along with Mum and Dad, insisted on driving me. Parking near Grandpa and Grandma’s building is fiercely contested and a hassle to get in and out of, so Second Uncle parked further afield and set off first thing to fetch the car after his morning shopping. All morning, Grandma asked over and over, “What time is the train?” and “What time is it now?” Eventually she simply had someone carry a stool to the doorway, where she sat alone, watching for Second Uncle to return.

Dad leaned over and cracked a joke in Grandma’s ear: “Now, Granny, this isn’t the old days of racing to catch a boat. Trains run to time—they won’t leave before their time.”

Perhaps Grandma remembered a time when, seeing someone off at the pier to catch a boat, she watched the vessel already pulling away and stamped her feet in panic, then rushed to the dispatch office to have the boat called back. In those days, the number of riverboat sailings on the Yangtze was small; miss one, and you’d have to wait at least another day.

● In the 1981 documentary The Yangtze, filmed by Sada Masashi, the filmmaker himself (the tiny figure on the left) walks along a path carved into the sheer cliff faces of the Yangtze Gorges. A path like that—my grandmother once walked it, too. She used to say that the Yangtze’s current ran fast and the rocks were treacherous; a fully laden wooden boat heading downstream was dangerous. So passengers would be put ashore to “take to dry land” along the mountain paths, then reboard once past that stretch of rocks.
● That peak dead centre in the frame is what locals call “Peach Mountain.” As a child, whenever our boat rounded into view of Peach Mountain, I knew Fengjie was just around the corner. Source: the documentary The Yangtze (Sada Masashi, 1981)
● The Fengjie river pier in 1981. I sent the image to Mum, and she told me the arched gateway the steps lead straight up through is called “Yidou Gate.” Source: the documentary The Yangtze (Sada Masashi, 1981)

Transport through these mountainous parts back home was long dominated by the river. No railway passed through; the switchback roads were as bumpy as they were slow, and the motorway had only a brief history.

When I travelled home to Beijing, I either took the riverboat downstream along the Yangtze—transferring to a coach for the stretch past the Three Gorges Dam, then catching a train from Yichang—or I went upstream by river or road to Wanzhou or Chongqing and flew from there. Either route was time-consuming and a considerable ordeal.

● Taking the high-speed train through Fengjie, the train is exposed to daylight for only a few seconds beyond the tunnel—you have to shoot fast. The train is crossing the bridge over the Meixi River, a tributary that joins the Yangtze at this point. Beneath that great bank of cumulonimbus on the left of the top photo lie Peach Mountain and Qutang Gorge. Photographed in July 2022 and January 2023 respectively.

Last year, the little county town long cut off from any railway suddenly gained a direct high-speed rail link, as if it had leapt straight to heaven. This stretch of line was built with particular difficulty and slowness: the bridge-and-tunnel ratio exceeds 95%, so the train runs almost entirely through dark tunnels in the mountains.

The high-speed train hurtles eastward through the Daba Mountains onto the plains of Central China, then north, reaching Beijing in just over six hours.

Stepping out of the station, the local dialects faded from my ears, and the Mandarin piped through the underground announcements sounded foreign. One step closer to my next homecoming.

Foodthink Contributor
Ahaolan
Wanting to travel light and see the world, yet wanting more time with family—what I’d most love to have is the superpower to clone myself and teleport.

 

 

 

All photos courtesy of the author

Unless otherwise noted, all photos were taken in April 2023

Editor: Zeen

Published by Foodthink