A restaurant in the desert

It was a pity that my husband was a foreigner.

To address my own husband as a foreigner sounds as if I exclude and alienated people from a different country than myself; but this was because our marriage involved different cultures as well as language, therefore; we had many issues we were unable to agree on at the same level during the life of our marriage. 

At first, when I made my decision to marry my husband Jose, I told him clearly the difference between us was not merely that we came from different countries, but also our personality too, it was possible that we would end up quarrelling, even fighting each other after we got married.

He replied: “I know you are short tempered, but you also have a kind heart, arguments and fighting usually happen anyway, we should still marry.”

Just like that, after seven years of knowing each other, we finally got married.

I was not a supporter of ‘The Women’s Liberation Movement’, but I would not willingly lose the freedom of my independent and innermost feelings to anyone after marriage. After all I insisted that after we got married, I would still behave in the way of who I am, if not I wouldn’t want to get married.

Jose replied me: “I want you as the person just the way you are, why should I marry you if you lose that personality!?”

Great! What a good manifesto from my husband, I totally took a comfort from his words.

As Jose’s wife, I accommodated his natural language (Spanish). 

Meanwhile, as for my own language, no matter the countless times I taught him the two different words in Chinese for ‘Man’ and ‘Enter’, he still managed to confuse them both!  What a miserable foreigner!

After that, I had to let myself go easy with the language matter and spoke only in his language. (But if we had children in the future, even though beat me dead, I would still teach them Chinese; on this point, he totally agreed with me.)

Cutting short from the nonsense, in summary of being a housewife, the first thing I did for my marriage was ‘cooking’. 

In contrast, was the matter of housework, which I did under painful sufferance was, but on the other hand fortunately I was very much interested in cooking! 

A few clove of onion and few slices of meat, frying them together become a dish, I much appreciated this kind of Art form.

My mother was far away in Taiwan and knowing that after my marriage, my husband Jose had to work in the desert in Africa, she felt her heart falling into pieces for me.

The fact was, Jose was the one who brought money to the home and I so had to follow wherever the money came from without a choice. 

As for eating habits, after our marriage we dinned entirely western style. However I also had some help from my home family, they kindly air-mailed lots of food parcels for us from Taiwan.

I received plenty of food treasure such as Chinese vermicelli, seaweed, Chinese mushroom, noodles and pork jerky; I was so over the moon and loved them so much. On top of it, my girl friend from Europe also sent me some sort of canned food and sauces.

With all these treasures I received, my Chinese restaurant opened in no time; it was only a shame that I had only one customer and he never paid. (After that, people were knocking on our door and queuing up for my Chinese food!)

The truth was, the food which mother sent wasn’t enough to open a ‘Chinese restaurant’, and fortunately Jose had never been to Taiwan, so he looked up to me immensely as if I was very much a ‘Chinese master chef’ and his confidence in me grew.

The first dish I presented to Jose was ‘Chinese vermicelli cooked in chicken soup’.

“Lets quickly serve supper, I am starving to death!” 

When Jose got home from work, he was always yelling straight away.

I felt I was in vain for loving him so many years, in return he only shouted loud for supper and not even looked at the face of his lovely wife, especially as this was the first thing he said when he came home from work. It didn’t bother me too much. After all I was his wife - ‘the yellow face woman’ so I set my mind at rest and settled for that.

However! Lets get back to the cooking, the first dish I cooked for him was ‘Chinese vermicelli in chicken soup ’. 

He took a slip of the soup and asked: “Oh, what is this? Is it Chinese’s thin noodles?” 

“Your mother in law sent them from thousands of miles away,” I replied. 

“What is it exactly? Give me some more, they are delicious.”

I used chopsticks to pick up a strand of vermicelli and said: “Have this one, it is called: ‘Rain’.”

“Rain?” He had frozen for few seconds.

As I said before, my marriage was full of freedom, our conversation would casually drift through anything from my head without filtering it naturally, and also it totally followed by my mood.

“As this one, oh! It’s the first rain in the spring, when it dropped on the top of the mountain and has frozen in a strip form, the village people bundled them together on their backs and sold them in exchange for wine to drink, you know, they are not easy to buy!”

Jose’s face went blank, staring at me hard and studied the bowl of the ‘Rain’, then he said: “You think I am an idiot?”

I did not answer him instead asked him: “Would you like some more?”

He replied: “Liar king, yeah, I still want some more.”

After that, he often ate the ‘Spring’s rain’, even though he never knew what exactly they were made of. 

Sometimes it made me feel sad to think how duped my husband Jose was.

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The second time we had Chinese vermicelli for dinner was called ‘Ants climbing on the tree’, it was just hot frying the Chinese vermicelli in the pan and adding some mince and sauce to it.

Jose was so often like a hungry horse whenever he came home from work, he took a big mouthful of vermicelli and asked: “What is it? It looks like white thread and taste like plastic?”

I replied: “Wrong answer, it’s your nylon fishing wire, but the Chinese people dye it white.”

He took a big bit on it again and smiling while talked me through: “So many weird names for it, if we really open a restaurant, this dish can sell for a good price, babe!”

That day he ate lots of white nylon thread.

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The third time we had Chinese vermicelli it was mixed with some spinach and mince; I chopped them all together and wrapped it in pastry to form a pasty and presented it like some little dumplings, actually they were more liked the Chinese East Northerner’s local dishes.

Jose said: “You have put some shark’s fin inside the pie, right? I heard this kind of food is very expensive, no wonder you only put so little in it.” 

I laughed out loud so much and fell on the floor.

He continued: “Please don’t let mother send this expensive ‘shark’s fin’ for us again, I ought to write a letter to thank for her generosity.”

I was over the moon and replied: “Go write it now and let me translate it into a letter for you, Ha ha!”

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One late afternoon, it was almost time he finished work, I took a chance that he would forget to look for the pork jerky; I quickly cut the pork jerky into some small square pieces with scissors and hid them in a glass jug with a blanket over it.

What happened on that day was that he had a blocked nose and needed a blanket to wrap up to sleep with. Because of that, I totally forgot my jug of hidden treasure, I just stood in the corner and lost myself in my classic Chinese novel of ‘Water Margin Tales of the Marshes’ which I have read more than a hundreds of thousands time before.

Jose was lying by himself on the bed, holding a jug and suspiciously looking around. At the time my head was up and my eyes level with his, Oh Dear! My goodness sake! I recognized he had found ‘The King of Solomon’s Mines’! 

I was shot over to him like a rocket and grabbed the jug while shouting: “This is not for you to eat! It’s a medicine! It’s Chinese medicine!”

He had already had full mouthful of pork jerky in his mouth, I exploded in anger but could not ask him to spit them out from his mouth. 

Jose mumbling to himself: “It’s strangely sweet, what is it?”

I said snappishly: “It’s a cough medicine for people whom have a cough.”

“Cough medication made out of meat? Do you think I am idiot?”

I had no choice but suffer in silence.

When I woke up the next day, I discovered a half jug of the pork jerky had gone, he stole it and shared it with his colleagues at work. 

After that, whenever I saw his colleagues, they all pretended, coughing like mad to my face and wanting to cheat some pork jerky from me, that including some Muslims. (I would not give it to any Muslim, it was immoral.)

Anyway, life for husband and wife as a couple was not always about food, quite the opposite, it’s all about working hard to earn money for food; overall it wasn’t as interesting as it sounded.

One afternoon, I had made some ‘rice roll’ for dinner, it’s the ‘Japanese style’ food sushi, which used seaweed to wrap up rice on the outside and inside it had some mince of meat.

This time, Jose refused to eat it.

“What! You give me some blue carbon papers to eat? Blue carbon copy paper!?”

I asked him slowly: “You really don’t want to eat it?”

“No, I don’t, I don’t want to eat it.”

“Good!” I showed over joy on my face and picked up a big roll of carbon paper, then ate it in front of him.

“Open your mouth and let me check?” Jose ordered me.

“You see, no blue colour stained, I only used the back of blue carbon paper, it won’t stain inside my mouth.” I said.

“You always say some horrible things that make non-sense everyday.”

“You are the Queen of liars; true or not, I hate you!

Quickly tell me the truth, what is this stuff?” Jose shouted.

“You never understand China, I am very disappointed in my husband.” I replied to him and at the same time, I swallowed another rice roll.

He was more annoyed, used a pair of chopsticks to snap a rice roll, his face had gone red and his expression flicked between the lines of bravery and sadness all mixed together; then he finally bit down hard on a rice roll and chewing it for ages and swallowed it.

‘’It’s seaweed.” He replied with release.

I jumped up and yelling with satisfaction: “That’s right, that’s correct, clever you!”

When I went up for the second jump, Joes caught me and gave me a big slap on my head.

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One day, my Chinese food had almost run out and I felt reluctant open my ‘Chinese restaurant’ again. So decided to present western style food on the table instead.

Jose got home from work and was surprised to see me frying steak.

He was happy and said loudly to me: “I want it half rare and will it come with French fries?”

I constantly cooked him steak for three days, but one day, he somehow seemed to lose in appetite, he just had one cut of his steak and didn’t touch it anymore.

“Are you working too hard? Do you want to have a little rest and eat your dinner later?” The so called ‘Yellow face wife’ sometimes had to show her tenderness.

“No, I am not unwell, I have just not been eating well.”

When I heard what he said, I couldn’t help myself, I jumped up and ran over and yelled to him: “Have not been eating well?  Not eating well? Do you know how much it costs for a kilogram of beefsteak?”

“No, that’s not that what I meant, my wife, I want to eat ‘Rain’; the food from the parcel that your mother sent tasted rather good.” Jose said.

“…Ah, oh…okay, Chinese restaurant will open twice per week, are you happy? Now, tell me how often you want it ‘Rain’?”

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One evening, Jose came back home and said: “Oh my dear! My boss asked me to come and see him today.”

“Is he raising your wage?” My eye’s suddenly full of sparkling.

“No——”

I grabbed him straight away sticking my nails deep inside his arm.

“It’s over, isn’t it? You got fired? Oh! My god! Oh! We just……..”

“Don’t nail me, you silly woman, listen to me now, my big boss said to me that all his employees from the company have been invited to dinner at our home apart from him. He is waiting for you to invite him for a Chinese meal.

“Your big boss wants me cook dinner for him? No, No, No, I don’t do such thing, I couldn’t invite him for that; I am happy to invite your colleagues but invite your boss for dinner is so spineless, you know I still have my dignity, I….”

I was making a big fuss in my great Chinese spirit but I could not express myself clearly and understandably enough; especially when my eyes met Jose’s eyes as I looked into his face, I knew I had to force my great Chinese spirit to stay silent in my throat!

The next day Jose asked me: “Hey, do we have any bamboo shoots?”

“There are many chopsticks at home, aren’t they made of bamboo shoots?” I replied motionlessly.

He rolled his eyes on me and said: “Big boss said he specially wants to eat bamboo shoot, stir fried with Chinese mushrooms.”

“Oh dear, dear, my….” What a sophisticated boss, I should never under anticipated people from another country. 

“Okay, I will invite your Big Boss to dine with us tomorrow, it’s not a problem and you know the bamboo shoots will grow in time, surly.” I replied Jose.

Jose looked at me deeply with his soft eyes, which bore into my eyes full of expression with love and tenderness. This is probably the first time he looked at me like that since we were married not long ago, it made me feel very flattered. But it was just not good timing, I wore my hair down in lose braids and my hair was flying messily just liked a Chinese ghost at that moment in that afternoon.

The evening finally came, I had made three dishes in advance and used slow heat to keep them warm. I even used a white tablecloth decorated with dinner candles and added an extra red colour cloth that I put diagonally on the table corner, it looked very pretty. 

For that dinner, we had made our guests felt very much at home. The Chinese food was exquisitely prepared. I, this so called ‘wife’ presented herself with a very clean look, I even wore a long dress for dinner. 

When dinner ended, the Boss’s partner came over to me specially: “If there is any vacancy at the Public Relation Bureau, I hope you can join us and become part of out company.’

My eyes shone. It was all thanks for the bamboo shoot stirred fried with Chinese mushroom.

When we finally said goodbye to the Boss, it was already the dead of night. I quickly took off my long dress and changed into a pair of jeans, then I tied up my hair behind my head with a rubber band and started working hard on washing the dishes.

Jose was very satisfied with the evening’s dinner, he asked me at the afterwards: “Hey, this bamboo shoot dish was very delicious, how did you manage to find the bamboo shoots?”

“Ha! Ha!” I laughed loud and said: “Ah, do you mean the ‘baby croquette stir fry with Chinese mushroom’?”

“What!? You!! You!! You were not just cheated me but also my boss——?”

“I have not deceived him, that was the most delicious ‘bamboo shoot’ that he ever tasted in his whole life, that’s exactly he said himself.”

Jose lifted me up in the air and gave me a big cuddle, washing up bubbles were all over his beard and he spoke loudly to me: “Long life! You live long life!” You are that monkey king whom can change himself into seventy-two different forms, what’s he called? What’s he called?….”

I slightly patted his head hard and said: “He is called ‘The Great Heaven Monkey King, don’t forget it ever next time!”