Food makes mother-tongue speakers of us all and memoirs about food, family and homeland allow privileged glimpses into other cultures. So too with Emperor Can Wait: Memories and Recipes from Taiwan by Emma Chen (Picador Africa). This is an extract featuring Chen and her schoolmate Xiaoshi:
Beer houses became popular in Taiwan around the time I started at university in the late 1970s. They sprang up like bamboo shoots after the spring rain. Simple wooden structures with canvas awnings gave them an informal feel; during the day, they probably looked shabby.
All the beer houses I knew were decorated with Christmas-tree lights: they were everywhere — around the wooden balustrades, the pillars and even the roof trusses. These hundreds of little lights didn’t illuminate the beer houses, but they did provide an exotic and festive atmosphere.
Their business started at dusk and ended at dawn and my college friends and I would meet up for dinner there. The beer came in full-size bottles, much like wine bottles, and was served in basic cold drink glasses.
The music was good too, especially at the place we frequented, Green Leaves Beer House. Probably because Green Leaves was close to a university, it used to play “campus songs”. These were rooted in folk songs, but had modern lyrics. Many of the singers were also students, and the songs they wrote were things to which we could relate.
Most of the songs taught to us at school had been patriotic: about killing Mao Zedong and Zhu De, about recovering Mainland China, about the beautiful Great Wall, about the magnificent Gobi Desert. We learned to feel hatred for enemies we’d never met and longing for a lost land we’d never seen. The moment campus songs came into existence — about love, confusion, friendship and identity — we took them on as eagerly as yellow-mouthed chicks.
Taiwan beer is sweetish and the taste is malty; it goes very well with strongly flavoured dishes. The food served at Green Leaves was more like street food than restaurant food. My favourite dish was the spicy clams. With its black and white shells gleaming with brown sauce, plus the fresh green of spring onions and a few red dots of chilli, it was a feast for the eyes.
The best clams for this dish were the size of large coins, their shells decorated with light grooves. Once the meat had been eaten, we didn’t discard the shells: they had to be licked, for the grooves caught plenty of sauce. (When I came to South Africa years later and saw Italian pasta shells, I noticed that some of them had the same kind of grooves on the surface; I was sure that the clams had inspired the Italian pasta makers).
Green Leaves was also popular because the portions were generous. The spicy clams would arrive on a large plate so full that the moment the plate was put on the table, a clam or two would fall off, with large drops of sauce. Opened-up clams lay on one another in a pile, promising a joy of abundance. Clams to me were one of those dishes where the quantity affects the taste: you can’t enjoy just one or two clams, for the flavour must build up; they should be served in mountainous heaps.
Eating clams was a messy affair and they tasted better when shared with friends. It was tedious to pick up and put down our chopsticks all the time, so we abandoned them and helped ourselves by hand. We would scoop out the meat, lick the shells and suck our fingers. When my mouth burned with chili, I would pick up my glass of beer with the palm of my hand and sip the cool contents. We chatted and laughed.
“Apparently you need to have at least a Toefl score of 550 to be accepted at graduate school in America.” (Toefl stood for “Test of English as a Foreign Language”.)
“Five hundred and fifty! Shoo!”
“Better go to one of those Toefl training centres. They’ll teach you how. Remember, there is also GRE.” (That stood for “Graduate Record Examination”.)
“I don’t even know if I want to go overseas.”
“You know how useless a BA degree is here. Do you want to be a secretary for the rest of your life?”
“My third aunt is a secretary, a very successful one. She works for the big boss. Makes more money than my third uncle.”
“Not with your shorthand.”
“Right. Tamade!”
The pile of empty shells grew higher and higher and our glasses were covered with oily smudges. I could feel sweat at the back of my head; my spectacles became slippery on my nose and my shirt stuck to my back. The combination of juicy clams and spicy sauce was a match made in heaven.
At the end of the evening, as I pedalled home on my bicycle, I could still taste the lingering freshness of the clams in my mouth; my head was slightly dizzy from the beer and my body felt light and refreshed.
The evening breeze blew up my shirt and touched all my pores like a gentle hand. I thought about our discussion earlier on, about studying abroad. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.
“Tamade!” I shouted into the air. I knew nobody could hear me. The future was full of uncertainties but they were still far away.
Xiaoshi passed the entrance examination the second time round. I’ve since heard that he’s an accountant in the States. He’s married, with two children.