Tie Ning - The Bathing Women

Tiao and Youyou took the same route home from school. Soon Tiao discovered that Youyou lived in the same complex as she did. They hadn’t met before because they had not been in the same elementary school, and now that she found that they were in the same class and complex, Tiao wanted to make an effort to get to know her. She didn’t look down on her at all, believing that even though reciting Chairman Mao’s quotations wrong was dishonourable, Youyou hadn’t done it on purpose. She was just a little careless. She also wanted to talk to her because Youyou spoke Beijing dialect, not Fuan. Tiao hurried after Youyou and called to her, “Hey, Youyou, wait a second.”

Her greeting sounded like an old friend’s, but the two hadn’t spoken before. Youyou, who was walking ahead of Tiao, stopped after she heard the greeting, waiting for Tiao as if she were an old friend. Youyou stood there, a thirteen-year-old with a tendency to put on weight, or, one could say, she was already a fat young girl. She had skin as smooth and pale as butter, short hair, and large breasts. Yet nothing about her seemed sexual, perhaps because of her innocent, cheerful face.

From the very beginning, they communicated with ease and needed no small talk because they instinctively liked the look of each other. They started from “Revolution is not inviting friends over for dinner.” Youyou said, “I’m actually not as stupid as the teacher thinks. Yes, I recited the quotation wrong, but think about it carefully: If revolution is not inviting friends over for dinner, what is revolution for?”

What is revolution for? This was a question that Tiao had never considered before. Now this Youyou who looked so carefree on the surface got her thinking. “Revolution …” Youyou said, “revolution at the very least ought to allow people to invite friends over for dinner.”

“But Chairman Mao said revolution was an uprising,” Tiao said.

“Exactly. If the people uprising don’t have food, how will they have strength to rise up?” Youyou said. “I’m afraid of being hungry — it scares me more than anything. If someone gives me a mouthful of food, I call him Grandpa.”

Tiao couldn’t help smiling, because of Youyou’s big heart, and because of her strange talk about revolution. Youyou pleased and surprised her. As they walked side by side, arriving at Building Number 6, Youyou had already put her cool, plump arm around Tiao’s shoulder. She whispered to Tiao, intimately and naturally, “Tiao, I really want you to know that I don’t blame our classmates for avoiding me. I’m a backward person. I just think the best thing to do is to sleep when your eyes are closed, and to eat when your eyes are open. So, guess what I want to be when I grow up? I want to be a chef. How much good stuff is there for a chef to do? A chef spends the day either treating people to food or eating it. Have you seen the movie called Satisfied or Not Satisfied ? It’s about a chef. Someday I’ll put on the tall white cap that the chefs wear! Don’t tell anybody. I know you won’t.”

How clever and lovely you are, Youyou! Tiao thought. Although Tiao had never thought about becoming a chef when she grew up, her passion for food wasn’t any less than Youyou’s. She and Youyou shared the same dangerous tastes, but she could never express herself so thoroughly, so bluntly and truthfully, so … so corruptly and decadently. Right in the middle of a revolution that was an uprising: here they were, talking about giving a dinner party and wearing a chef’s white cap. This was the pursuit of the corrupt and decadent lifestyle of the bourgeois; this was corruption and decadence itself. Tiao couldn’t help agreeing with Youyou’s philosophy while at the same time criticizing herself in her heart. She very much wanted to enjoy corruption with Youyou secretly, to experience decadence secretly.

They reluctantly said goodbye to each other. Although Youyou lived in Building Number 2, the same one as Chen Zai, only four buildings away from Tiao, they still felt reluctant to part, a feeling that Tiao would never again experience with a friend in her life.

Youyou was going to give a dinner party. One day early in winter, after school, she invited Tiao to come to a banquet at her house on Sunday. She chose Sunday because she would be the only one home. Her parents were in the Reed River Farm, like Tiao’s father. Normally, her grandmother stayed with her, but Youyou’s aunt had recently given birth to a child and her grandma had gone to look after the baby, so Youyou was the only one left at home.

She was happy to stay home alone; first of all, she didn’t have to answer her grandma’s gabby, irrelevant questions. Grandma loved to listen to the radio, but she often misunderstood what was on it. The radio always broadcast the news of whom the great leader had just met, and that “the meeting took place in a cordial and friendly atmosphere.” Grandma would ask, “Youyou, how come this cordial and friendly meeting only lasted for seven minutes?” She also mistook Nixon for “onion” and said, “Youyou, how come they call a big shot like him an onion?” Now that Grandma was away, Youyou, with her intense devotion, could take over the kitchen.

People’s food back then was simple and boring, so their kitchens were bare and basic. Although born with a passion for food, Youyou hadn’t seen much by way of gourmet cooking, nor did she have much money. But even with a single yuan in her pocket, she had the confidence to invite friends for dinner.

She spent fifty cents to buy a piece of streaky pork. She sliced off the skin and cooked it on a low heat for several hours. When the skin quivered and turned fluffy and soft and the juice thickened, Youyou added soy sauce and chopped spring onions, set it aside to cool and congeal, and she had jelly from pork skin, a dish called pork skin aspic — done. She then diced the fatty pork, coated it in flour batter, and fried it in oil (the diced pork burned because there was not enough oil), and the fried crystal pork was done. To be eaten dipped in salt and pepper.

She fished out some dried wood-ear mushrooms and daylily buds from the kitchen cabinet, soaked them open, and used leftover pork to make muxi pork — another dish done.

She wanted to serve four dishes and a soup, so she spent two cents on a piece of pressed crabapple cake. She shredded white turnip and sliced the cake. White turnip mixed with red crab-apple cake, delicious even to the eye. She then made a bowl of dried shrimp soup with soy sauce. Now the banquet, for which she had spent a total of fifty-two cents, was complete. Lastly, she grilled a handful of rice noodles on the stove for decoration. This was her own invention and ahead of its time — clear rice noodles that would puff up and whiten after being grilled, nicely crunchy, like the puffed food that would become popular in the eighties.

Tiao came for the banquet and brought Fei along. Youyou felt honoured to have a great beauty like Fei at dinner. She believed the gourmet food she created was intended for someone like her, and only a great beauty was worthy of it.

The three of them sat down to enjoy Youyou’s cooking. At Fei’s suggestion, they even drank some wine, which was really water. When the girls heard that Youyou had spent only fifty-two cents on such a big table of gourmet food, they couldn’t help praising her as a culinary genius, a genius who could turn lead into gold. Fei gulped the wine, gobbled up the pork skin aspic and the turnip, and munched on the crispy rice noodles. She ate and drank until her body slumped and her eyes went hazy. Youyou and Tiao helped her lie down on the bed. She lay on her side with her face propped up on an elbow and said, “Youyou, you have a really nice place, I wouldn’t mind staying here forever.” She looked so pretty at that moment, like a princess or a queen, that Tiao and Youyou, who stood beside the bed, were willing to serve her with all their hearts.