{"id":947,"date":"2014-01-19T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-01-19T13:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/?p=947"},"modified":"2014-09-12T15:10:12","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T22:10:12","slug":"chinese-poetry-comes-to-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/china\/chinese-poetry-comes-to-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Poetry Comes to Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dating<\/a>Dating.<\/b><\/h2>\n

I was still in college when I met Eugene, the man I would eventually marry. Besides being smarter and more interesting than anyone I’d ever dated, he was already working, so he had enough money to pay for a nice dinner and a movie. When he came to pick me up for a date, he always brought a gallon jug of Christian Brothers\u2019 sauterne to share with my roommates. He even loaned me his Pontiac Le Mons to drive to my student teaching assignment, leaving himself with nothing but his two feet to take him to work and back.<\/p>\n

One day he invited me to what turned out to be a very special dinner. By then he\u2019d already decided he wanted to marry me, and I was very close to saying yes.<\/p>\n

A cook and a poet.<\/b><\/h2>\n

Some friends had offered their home for the dinner, a large house with a big dining room and a humongous kitchen. The impressive guest list included not only our friends but also Eugene\u2019s bosses, their wives and the owner of Skagit Corporation, the largest employer in town.<\/p>\n

The dinner would be all Chinese, and Eugene would be the cook.<\/p>\n

It was the sixties, and in those days when Chinese restaurants served mainly chop suey, chow mein and egg foo yung, the dishes at Eugene\u2019s banquet were fantastically exotic. The guests had never tasted prawns that were so fresh, veggies so crisp or pork so unbelievably juicy. And where did he get the abalone? they wanted to know. Who would have thought to serve it in a salad with celery and sesame oil?<\/p>\n

The eight dishes he prepared that evening were listed on menus beside each of our plates. Every dish had a poetic name: \u201cfish jumping over the clear brook,\u201d \u201cdragon and phoenix admiring the moon,\u201d \u201cpearl round, jade pure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eugene was an engineer with the heart of a poet.<\/p>\n

Buddhist monastery in Xiamen.<\/b><\/h2>\n
\"Xiamen,<\/a>

Xiamen, 1983<\/p><\/div>\n

Many years later, in 1983 when we visited Eugene\u2019s hometown<\/a> with our children, almost everything was still owned by the Chinese government. A small seafood restaurant not far from our hotel had recently opened, though. It was perhaps the only private enterprise restaurant in Xiamen, and the local people were very excited to have it. The fish was excellent, they said.<\/p>\n

\"Xiamen<\/a>

Xiamen fish restaurant<\/p><\/div>\n

And it was. But the restaurant was small and from the look of the mismatched tables and chairs, the owner was working on a tight budget. When my father-in-law\u2019s friends wanted to treat us to dinner, they had something else in mind: the Buddhist monastery. It could accommodate the twenty-five people in our party, and the monks served the best food in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all vegetarian,\u201d they warned us. \u201cBut you\u2019d never guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBuddha jumps over the wall.\u201d<\/b><\/h4>\n

They were right. I could have sworn I tasted chicken and shrimp in some of the dishes. Everything was delicious\u2014all thirteen courses. And, like the dishes Eugene served years earlier, everything had a poetic name. The one name I remember was \u201cBuddha jumps over the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

The name has a story behind it<\/a>. \u00a0During the Qing Dynasty a scholar who was traveling in Fujian Province had a habit of carrying all his food in a clay wine jar. One day, resting near a Buddhist monastery, he started a fire and began heating it.\u00a0 Smelling the mouth-watering fragrance, the monks struggled to concentrate on their meditation. Temptation, however, was too great for one of the monks. He sprang to his feet and jumped over the wall, leaving his fellow monks behind.<\/p>\n

The story doesn\u2019t say whether the scholar offered the monk a bowl of the delicious dish or not. We can only hope he did.<\/p>\n

The version of \u201cBuddha Jumps over the Wall\u201d that we tasted must have been a vegetarian adaptation because the regular recipe<\/a>\u00a0which is still enjoyed to this day includes, among other ingredients, scallops, sea cucumber, abalone, shark fin, chicken, ham and pork.<\/p>\n

What do you think, do food and poetry go together?
\nHave you ever eaten “Buddha Jumps over the Wall?”<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we were dating, my husband cooked an eight-course meal for our friends and gave every dish a poetic name.
\nThe famous southern Chinese dish, Buddha jumps over the wall, has a story behind it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,82,29],"tags":[210,209,207,208],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-chinese-food","category-culture","tag-buddha-jumps-over-the-wall","tag-buddhist-monastery-in-xiamen","tag-dating","tag-poetic-names-for-chinese-dishes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-fh","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1690,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/china\/1690\/","url_meta":{"origin":947,"position":0},"title":"Good Chinese Wife, a memoir","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"July 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 When you join the army or sign up for an iron man race or commit to climbing a mountain, if the going gets tough, you put on your macho face and suck it up. 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