Kitchen Chinese (35 page)
Of the three cities, I probably feel most comfortable in New York, with its manic energy and diversity and sense of possibility. In fact, Beijing and New York are pretty similar (aside from racial diversity): they both burn with a vivid intensity, plus you can get a good meal in either city at any hour of the day or night. But New York also has an openness, a permissiveness that I love: expressing yourself is good, creativity is rewarded, being different is desirable. Only thirty years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Beijing hasn’t reached this level of openness yet. But I hope it will soon.
I miss many things about living in China—above all, I miss friends and food—and I would love to live there again. But next time I’d like to live in Shanghai, where my mother was raised. As a former treaty port, it has a history of gangsters, spies, turn-coats, and glamour—it would make a great setting for a book! Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll ever have the opportunity to live in Shanghai, but I can dream…
ANN MAH
was born in Orange County, California, and lived in Beijing for four years, where she was the dining editor for a monthly English-language magazine. She writes regularly for the
South China Morning Post, Condé Nast Traveler,
the
International Herald Tribune
, and on her blog, www.annmah.net. Ann was awarded a James Beard Culinary Scholarship in 2005 and now lives in Paris.
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PRAISE
FOR
KITCHEN CHINESE
“Ann Mah’s
Kitchen Chinese
is a delicious debut novel, seasoned with just the right balance of humor and heart, and sprinkled with fascinating cultural tidbits. Read thoroughly. Share with friends.”
—Claire Cook, bestselling author of
The Wildwater Walking Club
and
Must Love Dogs
“Suffused with humor, genuine warmth, and mouth-watering culinary descriptions,
Kitchen Chinese
is, first and foremost, about the adventure of self-discovery.”
—Irina Reyn, author of
What Happened to Anna K.
“Ann Mah’s sizzling portrait of life in Beijing serves up more than just scrumptious banquets, identity crises, and fraught, intercultural romances. It’s a story of how we find and nourish ourselves in unexpected ways and places, so delicious that I took breaks from reading only to dash to the phone and order Chinese.”
—Rachel DeWoskin, author of
Foreign Babes in Beijing
and
Repeat After Me
“With a light, self-deprecating touch, Ann Mah portrays the quirks, pleasures, and surprises of life as a young Chinese-American woman finding her way in an alien motherland.”
—Jen Lin-Liu, author of
Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China
“Ann Mah’s richly detailed
Kitchen Chinese
is humorous enough to make you laugh out loud, and so delicious you are sure to begin craving Peking duck and dim sum. A true tale of reinventing oneself in a new and foreign world.”
—Patricia Wells, author of
Vegetable Harvest
and
We’ll Always Have Paris…and Provence
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Cover photograph by Jason Hosking/Getty Images
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpts from
Classic Food of China
copyright © 1992 by Yan Kit So. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Yan Kit So.
Excerpt from
Swallowing Clouds
by A. Zee (Simon & Schuster, 1990) is reprinted by permission of the author.
Excerpts from
The Food of China
by E. N. Anderson copyright © 1988 by E. N. Anderson. Reproduced by permission of Yale University Press.
Excerpts from
Oxford Companion to Food
by Alan Davidson reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
KITCHEN CHINESE
. Copyright © 2010 by Ann Mah. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mah, Ann.
Kitchen Chinese / Ann Mah.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-177127-9
1. Chinese Americans—China—Beijing—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Beijing (China)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.A34923K57 2010
813'.6—dc22
2009012087
EPub Edition © December 2009 ISBN: 978-0-06-196948-5
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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