Searing Memories

Chronicle folks always have visions of chile peppers dancing in their heads. (Illustration By Lisa Kirkpatrick)

Ghostwritten

Like a stone falling into still water, the letter from an old boyfriend sent waves of memory rippling through the placid surface of my thoughts. He was perhaps the first person I had ever thought of marrying, and for the two years we were together, I just assumed we would. When I received the letter, it had been almost 15 years since I'd seen him, and 12 years since we'd communicated. The years had passed with mechanical efficiency, spitting us both out into disparate tracks. I moved away, married (someone else), started a family, and by most standards led an utterly predictable life; he married young, divorced early, and had already cycled through three different careers; his letter came to me from Taipei, where he had been living for almost a decade. Yet, when I read the letter with news of him and his adopted city, it was as if the clock gears had never turned. I was 19 again, and we had just landed in Taiwan, where he and I planned to spend the year teaching English. He was studying Chinese; I was looking for an adventure.

There is a Chinese saying: "We conquered the world through our food." Chinese culinary chauvinism is legendary. But as any lover of Chinese food will admit, there is a kernel of truth to that dictum. More than any other cultural group, the Chinese care about cuisine. It pervades each activity and every social interface. There is no place one can go there and not find a sausage vendor or a dumpling stand. For both of us that year became an adventure in eating.

When I recall the time we spent in Taiwan, my strongest memories are of food. They are of eating fresh-steamed bao tze (dumplings) from street carts by the side of the road or of devouring fried tofu and spicy jellyfish at the night market. I can still picture the little corner cafe that used to make the best san bao fan (three treasure rice) in town, and the dirty roadside stall whose yu t'iao shao bing (fried dough wrapped in sesame buns) were simply peerless. But the most lasting impression I have is of snacking on Kung Pao chicken late into the night at one of Taipei's ubiquitous beer houses. Kung Pao chicken, or gong bao ji ding, as it is more properly called, was one of those fundamental dishes that every beer house and restaurant served. Spicy and salty, soulful and satisfying, it was my Taiwanese equivalent of enchiladas, macaroni & cheese, or the hamburger.

The gong bao chicken we ate in Taiwan was nothing like the electric, sweet Kung Pao chicken of my suburban American childhood. Unlike the deep fried, near bulletproof morsels bathed in glossy pink sauce I had grown up on, the gong bao ji ding of Taipei's beer houses was tender, earth-toned, studded with roasted peanuts and big chunks of dried spicy chile that were the color of firecrackers, or a Chinese wedding. It was thrilling to discover a newness to a dish I had come to think of in America as utterly banal.

I learned that the dish was named after a 19th-century governor of Sichuan province in China. His official title was Gong Bao, hence the name gong bao ji ding. However, during China's cultural revolution, the name of the dish was changed, and all reference to the politically inappropriate imperial bureaucrat, gong bao, was removed. Governor's fried chicken was changed to fried chicken with chiles, or some other politically neutral name. In Taiwan, however the dish survived with its name intact. Perhaps its imperial connotations were, in fact, the reason that the dish was so popular in Taiwan. Taiwan's comfort food, it could be that gong bao chicken was that country's thumb on the nose to the mainland's determined communism.

More likely though, gong bao's popularity can be traced to its satisfying simplicity. It is easy and inexpensive to prepare. It tastes delicious with beer and never fails to please a crowd.

In the weeks following the letter, I wondered why he had contacted me after so many years had passed. Phantomlike, my thoughts wound around nostalgic recollections of that far away time. Then one day I understood that the reason he had contacted me was not because of some absurd enduring attachment, or lingering romantic sentiment, but because the impact of our journey still mattered to him. And I knew that he, too, and that unforgettable adventure in food, and one dish made of chicken, peanuts, and chiles the color of firecrackers will always matter to me.