Jen Lin-Liu: Serve the People

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Are there too many books about China and Chinese food? No way. We need all the help we can get to understand this complex, powerful society. China is changing at an incredible rate and it impacts the rest of the world as it increases its economic and political might. If it all seems daunting and confusing, then turn to food for a way to make sense of the change. What the Chinese eat and what they think about what they eat is a reflection of what they think about the world. Jen Lin-Liu's provocative book, Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China (Harcourt 2008) sets out to examine China and her own experience of it through the lens of food. It is a great read because it tells the story of working class immigrants to Beijing, who, like herself, are all drawn to restaurants and cooking. Through their stories, and Jen's own, the upheavals in Chinese society – poverty and wealth – unfold, as she becomes a chef. Jen spoke to Super Chef recently about her book. Super Chef: Why did you choose the title of your book? Jen Lin-Liu: The title comes from a slogan from Chair Mao, used in the 1950s and 1960s. The slogan was meant to encourage people. It was Communist propaganda; your interests would be subjugated to everyone. The title is meant ironically. There is a double meaning. It is about food and feeding other people. She explained that she was not initially interested in food in China: Super Chef: How did you realize that food was the key to writing about China? Jen Lin-Liu: I was writing about everything but food when I first got there - politics, economics, and social change. I would have an interview with a boring government official over lunch or dinner. It was a stilted conversation. Then the food would come out. I remember one official whose face lit up. He started describing Peking Duck and speaking about how the skin should be. Jen is Chinese-American. Her parents hail from Taiwan, so Mainland Chinese cuisine was unfamiliar to her. In the book she writes: Even my beloved dumplings were different: they were served with vinegar and heaps of minced garlic – no soy sauce– and contained pungent vegetables like Chinese chives. What was this alien food that was supposedly authentic? (p. 21) In the first section of the book, Jen is studying in a squalid vocational cooking school where she faces discrimination both because she is a woman and women do not work as professional chefs, but also because she is not a native speaker of Mandarin. She perseveres, gets private tutoring from Chairman Wang, and finally takes and passes the national cooking exam for a professional chef's certificate. She is encouraged to cheat on the written portion by everyone, but resists and passes. Jen writes powerful portraits of the people she meets and works with: Chairman Wang and her experiences during the Cultural Revolution, to Zhang, a noodle maker, and the waitresses and cooks who work with her. She writes about their lives before they reach Beijing and their struggles in the city. She patiently builds up their trust before she can draw out their stories as they cook side-by-side: Jen Lin-Liu: It didn't occur to me, but cooking takes a lot of time. You can spend a lot of time talking about other things while cooking. These are very natural conversations, and you take notes on the recipes, and meanwhile you take notes about the surroundings and the conversation. Super Chef: Did Chairman Wang and the others know you were writing a book about them? Jen Lin-Liu: They did know. For Chairman Wang, she was so blunt with everything in her past, but I don't think she quite understood. She would just say, yes, write it down. Hopefully it will be translated soon, and she can read it. She teaches at Black Sesame Kitchen, my cooking school, and so she has met a lot of my foreign friends who have read the book. In the second section, she apprentices herself to a noodle maker and a dumpling maker, and then finally, in the third section, she works in fine dining. The immigrants are often swindled of their savings and live in poverty, sending money back to their families in the villages they left behind. Practically everyone she describes is a migrant to Beijing: "There are too many of us now," he said echoing Chairman Wang's comments about migrants in Beijing. In the past, the government had restricted the number of migrants who came to the cities. But as cities boomed and increasingly depended on migrant workers (most urban dwellers weren't willing to take labor-intensive jobs) the government had largely given up on stemming the rural tide. (p. 155) Serve the People captures a period in China where everything is in flux, from the use of MSG to common sayings to the rise of the middle and upper classes. Jen's cooking jobs bring her into close contact with men and women who are caught up in the upheaval. It is a story that keeps the reader going, learning about the economy, transportation, and urban slums, while reading about the food, the cooking, and the markets. Jen includes recipes for many of the dishes she describes. This is a fascinating portrait of China in the guise of a fine foodie story – or is it the other way around? 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