A Beijing Feast
I was wrestling with this monument of a menu when Pang Nan, our host for the night, entered the room. He was a big man even among ‘big’ men, corpulent with a ruddy face and a restless nose that sought smells the way a libertine might chase after women.
Our restaurant, a seven-story tribute to gustatory provocation here in Beijing, had menus that could best be described as tomes. Pang was a Chinese film producer who’d instigated a movement of subculture in cinema that vacillated between exploitative flesh flicks and efficiently brilliant drama’s of the soul, the final verdict depending on which critic you asked.
“Welcome my friends,” he said in Mandarin as he reached the head of the table. “I’ll make this short. My doctors told me I have a bad heart condition that basically boils down to this; cut back on my eating habits or, I die... So I choose death.”
There was a general gasp, a few friends about to protest.
Pang Nan cut them off by saying, “Anyone who tries to change my mind will be escorted out by my bodyguards.” He pointed at the ten staunch figures behind us. “I don’t want that. I asked you here to enjoy one last feast together and because I have a favor to ask of all of you.” He took a sip of his wine. “I love food because the food a man eats defines his very existence. This restaurant has chefs from all over the world. Tonight, I want you to pick the one dish that represents best what our relationship meant to you.” His wife suddenly burst into tears. “There, there,” he assured her. “Don’t cry- we both lose face this way. We have to accept death the same way we do life- with joy and dignity... Now, who’d like to go first?”
My mind crept back to when we first met two years ago. He hired me to photograph digital stills for one of the movies he was producing. The first thing he said was, “I want to make a movie where nothing happens for two hours and in the last minute, everyone dies.”
I knew he made unusual films. The title of the movie for his current production translated into Kung-Fu Babes Rescue the World From Existential Oblivion. It was about a handful of beautiful Chinese women in bikini’s discoursing with villains about Heidegger and Mozi as they perpetrated thought crimes against thought police, enforced tedium their secret weapon. “All day, I get aspiring screen-writers pitching me their next ‘great epic’ movie. I wish these guys would stop focusing on trying to tell a ‘great’ story and focus on just telling a ‘story.’ You hungry?”
“I brought lunch,” I answered.
“What you got?”
It was a hamburger from McDonald’s.
An outraged snarl crossed his lips. “What’s wrong with you? Never let me catch you with a hamburger in my sight. I’ll take you out for a real lunch.”
He took me to a local restaurant and ordered fried duck with dasheen, braised turtle in brown sauce, wutong tea smoked chicken, jelly fish head with mixed vegetables, and duck blood with chili sauce.
“Is that enough?” he asked worriedly.
“More than enough.”
During our lunch, he plied me with questions. Like what would a world without pornography be like; if we got rid of walls (hence privacy), would people be more honest; and how much kinder would friends be if everyone was required to spend one month a year in complete isolation? Suddenly, he snapped, “Fuwuyuan!” meaning waitress.
When she came, he barked that the duck was not tender enough, demanded the chef come out, gave him a tongue lashing, and instructed him on how to do it properly.
“Was it that bad?” I asked.
“The difference between good and great food can lie in a single spice,” he said. “Did you know I got my start filming restaurants for TV shows?”
“I didn’t.”
“I was an assistant researching the best restaurants and I learned everything about food then.” His parents, like so many others, had lost all their wealth during the Cultural Revolution. At school, his teachers beat him for being a delinquent as he hated studying. He’d gotten this job because the producer was an old friend of his father. “For five years, I did everything my boss wanted. I knew it was my only chance to get somewhere. I finally got my break doing a show about celebrities. The producer asked me to help out with a film that was over-budget, a biopic about a general in the era of the Warring States. It bombed. The critics panned it, the action was terrible, the acting was unbearable. Everything about the movie sucked,” he declared with a sense of satisfaction.
“You seem proud that it failed,” I said.
“Not just failed, catastrophically failed,” he clarified, laughing. “I like things in extremes.”
In the present, a close friend selected shrimp hot pot they’d devoured on a birthday years ago. His younger sister picked a bean curd soup they’d shared in their childhood. His fourth uncle chose duck liver fried rice since Pang Nan sent him a dish of it every year. Each of them took a minute to explain their reasons.
I’d come to China because of ice cream. Three years ago, I engaged in a big argument with my then girlfriend. I wanted a sundae, she wanted to go home. We fought for thirty minutes in the parking lot. Suddenly, an Asian guy with long braided hair and a pale lanky face approached. “Can you both shut up and hand over your wallets?”
“Excuse me?”
He took out a gun and pointed it straight at my face. The blood drained from my face and fear incited revulsion along my flesh. As the boils popped along my arm, I realized, I’m going to die for an argument over ice cream with a girl I don’t even love.
We both surrendered our wallets. He took out a five dollar bill and threw it at me. “Stop arguing and just get your goddamn ice cream.”
Afterwards, my girlfriend screamed at me, blamed me for what happened.
I was speechless, couldn’t sleep the whole night. On the news, they reported yet another mass shooting. That whole week, anytime anyone acted suspicious in a public setting, I became nervous, apprehension sapping my energy. I bought a bulletproof vest online and wore it everywhere I went. I was going to have a nervous breakdown if I didn’t change something soon. I asked everyone, where’s a place without guns? Where’s it safe and I don’t have to worry about getting shot? My girlfriend angrily replied, China.
I bought a ticket, broke up with her, and left two weeks later.
In the present, they were getting closer and closer. Everyone had a clever anecdote, a witty insight into Pang’s character. I was still clueless and flipped through photographs of exotic dishes, trying to read the Mandarin characters I could. What to select, what would have meaning?
“You know why I decided to re-hire you for every shoot?” he asked me during our third film together.
“Why?”
“Cause on our first production, you took photos of the janitor, the PA’s, even the caterer. All the photographers I’ve hired only shoot the talent and key staff.” Pang Nan grinned. “My father was a latrine cleaner and everyone thought it was a disgrace. No one would marry him except my mother, and that was only because she was paralyzed in her left leg. No one cared about their story. That’s why I’m balancing things out now and making movies about regular people.”
‘Regular,’ was a relative term for Pang. His last few protagonists included the elevator boy pontificating on the commercialization of love, a waiter who led a revolution against television, a taxi driver who decided to take people where they needed to go rather than where they asked to be taken. As a connoisseur of eccentricities, he harvested eclectic quandaries, sowing and reaping them into seeds of habit. The mundane gleamed uncannily in the juxtaposition of light on filth, junk baptized in a sheath of virgin wool.
“So you worked your way up, eh?” he asked me.
“Yeah. Four years before I got to be a full-fledged photographer. And that was for a video game magazine.”
“Do you like videogames?”
I nodded. “When I was a kid, I’d play them till 3, 4 in the morning. I loved their stories.”
“Stories?”
“Yeah, I loved how heroic the main characters were. I wanted to be like them. But when I grew up, I realized- I realized maybe, maybe I couldn’t be as courageous as those heroes... That actually, I was kind of the opposite...”
“Courage isn’t just about shooting guns and flashing swords,” he said.
“What is it then?” I’d asked.
“It can be as simple as making the choice no one else would.”
And now, it was finally my turn. Everyone looked to me. I flipped through the menu one last time. Made my decision. Approached him. Turned to the Western food section and pointed.
Pang stared gravely at me. “You sure about that?” he asked.
I’d picked a hamburger and fries. “Yeah.”
“They say irony is the only true sincerity left in this world.” He broke into laughter. “Take a seat and enjoy.”
I exhaled in relief.
The feast was grand and I ate until I couldn’t feel my stomach. I felt a baby of digested food growing in my belly, but it was okay. Pang had understood my gesture.
He didn’t die that night. Nor the next two nights I joined him. When I greeted him farewell, we barely exchanged words. My choice had said everything that needed to be said.
I had to leave for a shoot down in Guangzhou, but I heard he lasted another three weeks before his gut burst. I imagined him dying in bliss, surrounded by a gormandizing nirvana. But from what I gathered, his death was excruciatingly painful. His last meal was both his best and worst.
I don’t think he would have wanted it any other way.
Peter Tieryas Liu likes to wander the world with his wife and eat foods that have never been eaten before. Some of his musings can (or will) be found in the Bitter Oleander, decomP, the Indiana Review, and Pank’s This Modern Writer. His blog is tieryas.wordpress.com where he invites recipes of exotic cuisines. |
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