The Chinese Man Said
Joseph Woodard
copyright © August 1998
Lam Duk is Chinese Laotian.
He lives, as many other old men do, in a room above Chinatown stores.
The eaves of the dark tiled roof on his building curve up at the corners,
like a pagoda. The light pink stucco walls of the two-story structure are
patched with gray. The second floor has an exterior hallway. Paint peels
from the wood. Hand washed clothing, coveralls and cotton shirts, hang on
rope strung between warped uprights. Seedy stores downstairs sell
vegetables, dry goods, fried noodles, and bowls of soup. Old men pass
hours in a tiny barber shop. They enjoy indecipherable jokes in dialect.
Or they argue about the politics of their twenty block area, their
universe, their camp, their refuge, their prison.
Lam is more open. He wanders past storefronts in the afternoon.
Almost every day he buys something: bok choy, fruit, soy milk, ginger,
lotus root, soap powder, pork bun, a new belt for his jeans, a Chinese
language newspaper. He enjoys the shopping crowd.
He eats out. He orders tea and chow fun, fried wide noodles. He could
have anything he requires nutritionally at the restaurant where he cooks
during the week, and at the deem sum house where he is the noodle
specialist on weekends, but he eats out as well. That's where I met him
and discovered he's pleased to share conversation with a stranger. He
keeps food in his room. He stir fries occasionally on an illegal hot
plate. Other old men in rooms on his floor cook as well. If his rooming
house ever burns down, the soot won't smell of charcoal and superheated
brick, but hoy seen sauce, ginger, the chummy aroma of burnt popcorn from
incinerated rice, noodles, salt fish, and carbonized flank steak.
His arms are cratered with deep burns made by hot oil when it splashes. He
knows stir fry, chow, the art of instant cooking in a wok, a deep pan
cupping a dash of oil in the small end of a steel oval, positioned over a
high flame. Choy, green leafy vegetables, and other condiments, red
peppers, garlic, sauces, combine in the wok with thin sliced beef or pork,
sea food bits like shrimp, squid, scallops, and just the right amount of
water for a masterful warfare of steam. Each load cooks in less than a
minute. The fried delight is served over noodles, many varieties, wide,
thin, soft, crispy. Or rained on heaps of steamed or stir fried rice. The
varieties of combinations equal the numbers of wishes in a hard-pressed
population that survives by work and more work in a culture that doesn't
tell secrets. Food is compensation. Taste is the approved pleasure. Lam
knows whole festivals dance inside his fry pan.
He bends, sitting or standing. His back no longer straightens. This
effect of time and memory makes him even shorter. His face is lined. He
allows a wispy white beard to grow. He says it makes him appear wise, and
it also makes him look poor. His beard protects him, he explains. Robbers
can see he has nothing to steal, not even his beard. He never has more
than five dollars. When he turns his face up to examine the interviewer or
inspect the restaurants he visits, his eyes dance. They are clear blue
lights inside a deep, wrinkled visage sheltered by white eyebrows and
shuttered by narrow lids.
When he visits a restaurant, he compares what he orders to his own
preparations. He studies the competition. Even at his age, he learns.
Prices change much faster than quality, he says. But food fads come and
go. Chinese food is not Chinese food only, but the end result of a
confluence of migration, the collision of departures and arrivals across
the globe. Lam's fry pan is the book writ by the lingering signature of
millions of pilgrims reinforcing a past that adapts in order to
persist.
A translator, a university student, helps me understand Lam. The scholar's
parents immigrated from Cambodia. He studies language at Cal Berkeley.
Lam likes the young man. When Lam talks to me through the translator, he
is really talking to the young man.
Lam says, "I am actually fourteen years old,
though I look older." He smiles slightly, joking to
himself in case no one appreciates his attitude. Humor
among Chinese is unusual, and traditionally dangerous.
"I have no one else now, no family, no village. No
one will die for what I say. I can say what I want."
In this liberty, he is exceptional. Historically, an
unguarded word could be the provocation for the slaughter
of the speaker, his family, everyone who lived around him.
"I enjoy women. Of course, young ones are better. Not too young.
They try things to see if they like them. I cannot afford experiments. At
my tender age, if everything comes to a good end, that is
enough."
"Patience is important. I can now wait forever. I know that some
things will work sooner or later. Some things will never work. Wait for
good things. Bad things will pass. Patience gives justice a
chance."
"Calm down. Then you can get what you want. If you are not calm,
what can you do right?"
"I remember everything that happened. Not in order. Some days I
serve myself past events from a menu, some of these, some of those.
History keeps recomposing itself in new stories. Every meal reminds me of
other meals I have eaten. Every taste is the memory of a hundred tastes.
I am rich in memories, but a slow eater."
"Joy is a young child who does not know that she is less than any
adult. A greater joy is a child who insists that she is an adult. My
greatest joy would be adults who believe her."
"The sad men who sit in parks feel useless. They do not speak. So
they are correct. I speak. I say what I think. I say whatever I feel is
right. I am not useless. But I am probably incorrect." The lightest
of thoughts widens Lam's mouth when he says this to his knees. "A man
is useless because others say he is and he believes them. He should let
his practice tell him whether he serves a purpose."
"Only other people can give you your identity. Only you can say
whether you are worthwhile."
Lam makes good money on the weekends when he cooks in a fancy deem sum
house. The money he earns there is likely more than enough to live on.
Even so, he labors long hours each Monday through Friday in a working
class Chinese restaurant preparing ordinary dishes. He doesn't explain why
he continues to work as he always has. He speaks fondly of his two jobs
and his daily routine. He sleeps from Midnight until five o'clock every
morning. His waking hours are spent working, testing food at restaurants,
or reading in the park on sunny afternoons between the lunch rush and
dinner. He never debates in the barber shop. His company, his social
life, is in the kitchen.
"I show the young men how to cook. One young man is fifty-five, but
he is learning."
"We joke a lot. I tell them luck pays laughs, not dollars. They want
money. They gamble and work and work and gamble. They hide their money.
I tell them laughter is something you can give away and still keep. It is
worth more than money. They say you cannot eat laughter; you cannot pay
the rent with laughter. I tell them I remember when money was worth
nothing and I could laugh anyway. If I could not laugh, I would be angry
at those who made laughter impossible. If I only had money, I would have
to keep it secret. If I lost it, who could I tell? Who would care that I
lost the secret thing I hid from them? If I had money I would have to bury
myself. I am not ready for the grave yet. In the grave I will have money,
but now I can have all the laughter I want and share it with anyone. What
king is richer?"
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