I was born into a world overshadowed by the tumultuous era of the Cultural Revolution in China. My mother, who had fond memories of a better time during her own youth, couldn’t help but worry about the challenges that lay ahead for me. So, from the tender age of five, she began imparting a set of survival skills, anticipating the uncertain future.
By the time I turned eight, I had become the household maestro, overseeing the culinary affairs of our modest family — just my mother and me. My father, due to political constraints, still resided in a rural town, while my younger brother lived a thousand miles away with my maternal grandparents.
Winter mornings held a particular ritual for me. It began with a pre-dawn visit to a local farmer to fetch fresh milk, followed by a bustling trip to the nearby farmers’ market to procure an assortment of ingredients including live fish, rice field eels, chickens, and eggs. And then the daily ritual, cooking with what I had procured because refrigerators were non-exist back then.
I learned the intricate art of gutting a palm-sized fish without rupturing its tiny but incredibly bitter gall bladder. I could skillfully catch one slippery eel from the bucket, smashed its head hard on the edge of the bucket, then nail the head on a long nail sticking out of a wooden panel, use a sharp small knife to cut it open with two strikes: one open the throat area and one cut all the way down to its tail, and gut out all the inside, all done with less than one minute. But my most remarkable skill was the ability to singlehandedly slaughter a big chicken cleanly and efficiently. I could even collect the warm blood of the dying chicken and turn it into a delightful blood custard, a key ingredient in a delicious blood cube soup.
I became so proficient that I was entrusted with the task of selecting and preparing the fattest and heaviest hens or roosters whenever I visited my father’s side of the family, residing half a city away. My grandparents frequently sent me to the market to find these birds as they were scarce, and I learned the secrets of avoiding unhealthy livestock, identifying overfed birds, and assessing their tenderness by feeling their bellies.
Well, in short I was a heartless survivor-type kid through and through. Mom did a great job.
But, when I turned ten, when our dad finally was allowed to be transferred back to reunite with four of us, I suddenly lost the appetite to slaughter the livestocks for meals.
The trembling body of the eels, the fish, especially the chicken, the hens and roosters in my hand became so unbearable that I had to stop. If needed, I would rather not eating their delicious meat. This change in my attitude was so profound that I couldn’t even assist the butcher when someone else was tasked with the slaughter.
Dad took over.
There was one incident that I still remember vividly till this day about one of his early days as the household butcher.
One day we acquired a massive rooster, and as my father attempted to kill it, chaos erupted in the kitchen. I rushed to the scene to find the colossal bird perched on the stove counter, its neck half-cut, bleeding, and wildly flapping its enormous wings and hissing towards my poor gentle dad. Dad eventually caught it and with my help he killed it and promised he would never need my assistant never again.
Chichen soup in my childhood memory was always very delicious and saved for special occasions due to scarcity. I was so privilged to master the slaughtering skill at a young age with more than usual frequencies of excercises with the love of my mom and grandparents. They watched me growing up fast with weary hearts as the society was a dark dark place for adults and intellectuals in particular. I was their blissfully ignorant child shielded by their love, excelling in the life skills and passions they imparted.
One of the first culture shocks I encountered when I arrived in the new world was the inexpensiveness of chicken meat and the blandness of chicken soup. I soon stopped making chicken soup altogether and nearly gave up on it.
Time fast forwarded a few weeks ago, I was introduced to a private wechat group that was specialized to get the freshest produce, poultry products from nearby farms.
One item caught my eyes — freshly slaughtered, never-frozen, two-year-old hens.
I placed an order.
When I opened the package, the two stiff big chicken feet and legs still gave me some uneasy feeling that this bird might just been killed last night.
Nonetheless, I proceeded to cut the bird into pieces, and I was immediately struck by the fresh, tender, and aromatic meat, devoid of the watery texture found in frozen poultry. For a chicken this fresh, all I needed was a large pot filled with cold water, a few slices of ginger, and a slow two-hour boil.
The childhood memory of a delicious chicken soup finally came back, once more, wrapped with the deep loving memory of mom, dad, grandma and grandpa.
