Holiday Hosts in China: Killing with Kindness

Tall, graying and dignified, Wang Bao Shan opened the door of his tidy three bedroom apartment, a short bus ride from Beijing’s resplendent Summer Palace.

When I went to shake his hand, he gestured to show it was covered in baking flour, his galley kitchen full of the pungent aromas of hot bread, spices and savory meat.

At age 70, Wang had spent the morning preparing his signature Chinese meat pies. His wife, Du Huan Xin, had even inquired the night before about our preferences.

Did we want lamb, beef, pork or Chinese leeks? Or all of the above?

My mother-in-law says Wang is known among his friends for the quality of his kitchen wizardry, and my wife’s mother knows good cooking when she sees it. She could have easily opened her own restaurant if life’s frying pans had aligned just so. 

In fact, Wang’s meat pies are better than you’ll find in any restaurant. The fillings are plentiful and even though the dough is rolled impossibly thin, the pies never break apart when you dip them in rice vinegar with your chopsticks.

We’d met Wang and Du a few years ago in San Francisco when they passed through on vacation with their son and daughter in law.

Du had worked with my mother-in-law in a military factory in Beijing. They’d known each other for decades and my wife had insisted it was our duty to show them some authentic Chinese hospitality so far from home.

We took them out to a good Chinese restaurant and I was immediately drawn to the diminutive Du, a beaming, talkative women with large glasses, who resembled one of the Chinese dumplings her husband might whip up in his kitchen. 

You just wanted to hug her. And I did. I also started calling her Mama Number Two.

Now we were in Beijing and it was their move to return the hospitality.

During this holiday season, when friends and family gather for huge repasts, I wanted to celebrate such gracious generosity. I’ve been a guest at a lot of tables, in Rome, Menlo Park, Seoul and San Fransisco, and while every culture has its dedicated traditions of giving, with special recipes and long hours in the kitchen, I believe the Chinese have taken this hosting business to a new, if not a bit neurotic, level.  

In the cab over to their apartment, I did stomach-stretching exercises to prepare for the onslaught of food that I knew would be thrust upon me, lovingly but assertively.

I was feeling a bit under the weather with a cold and had suggested to my wife that perhaps we should postpone. But she would have none of it. She knew that Wang was in the kitchen working away, so I would just have to buck up and shut up.

“Just don’t start coughing at the dinner table,” she warned.

Apparently, it would be rude to bring flu germs along with our gift chocolates.

Once we were inside the apartment, our hosts’ full-scale assault began in earnest.

Du helped us off with our coats and I was shown a prime spot on the couch as she fluffed my pillow as though I was some esteemed guest, which could not have been farther from the truth.

She pushed a rolling coffee table before me, laden with nuts and candy. Bowls of peanuts, sunflower seeds and tangerines were thrust in my face. 

Was I comfortable?

Actually, she was making me nervous, with all this aggressive hospitality.

It reminded me of those meals partaken years ago with relatives in Southern Italy, my hosts shoveling a second and third helpings onto my plate, despite my best protests. When I suggested they too have more, they waved me off.

No, they were full, thank you. But you are the guest. You must eat.

In Beijing, Du continued her offensive.

Was I thirsty? Did I want beer? Bai jiu? Red wine?

Feeling woozy from my cold, I didn’t think it was a good idea to start guzzling booze at noon, so I chose a bottle of soda water, which was snapped open and immediately placed before me, abra cadabra.

Next to us, a small table had been pulled out from the wall to make room for four. It was laden with a prepared feast that included plates of Wang’s steaming meat pies, along with tofu with green onions, cold tofu pasta, smoked duck, braised beef, garlic sausage, cucumber salad with vinegar and garlic, and other assorted cold dishes like wood-ear fungus with bamboo shoots and sweet tomatoes with sugar.

A frontline of alcoholic beverages also awaited like little soldiers ready to begin the battle against my sobriety

Du launched into her requisite compliments. I was thinner, she said, using both hands to indicate my new more-sculpted features.

I parried back. And she too looked younger, too.

But I was getting older, I added. My eyes are failing.

“Kai wan xiao,” my wife immediately interjected. “He’s joking.”

But Du knew that. At this setting, I was already a favorite child. I could do no wrong.

Quickly, I witnessed our hosts’ two-pronged battle plan. 

They worked independently to ply their wares, with neither paying attention to the entreaties the other was making. Du offered me more to drink, for example, snapping open a second bottle of water, even though I had barely touched the first. Then her husband walked in from the kitchen and plied me with beer.

Even though I declined, he opened a room temperature 16-ounce can of German ale  and set it in front of me.

Did I want some wine as well? He reached for an already-opened bottle of red on the table, only to find a bit of cork stuck in the neck. He immediately hurried off for another bottle as my wife rose to stop him, all to no avail.

Throughout the meal, he kept a close eye on my beer-drinking progress, refilling my glass after each sip with his own can, even though I still had a full beer by my side.

Du was also observant. She tracked my eyes, gauging which one of her dishes most pleased me, and then preemptively shoveled more onto my plate.

“Don’t worry,” my wife said. “If he likes a dish, he’ll eat the whole thing. No manners.”

Meanwhile, Du watched me slowly work on my cold tofu dish with a pair of chopsticks. Deciding that my progress wasn’t sufficient, she rushed off to the kitchen and returned to lay a large spoon by my side. 

My wife told her that my chopstick use was a point of pride. But only after more close examination that I was indeed doing her dish a serviceable job, did she relent.

I felt like a prized barnyard pig that was being fattened up for the county fair competition. After that, who knew? Probably off to the slaughterhouse.

We all know how the Chinese love their pork.

After lunch, I asked about their lives as retirees in busy Beijing. He’s an amateur artist who works in watercolors. They take regular walks at the Summer Palace. When I asked about how they’d met, Du rushed off to return with a couple of photo albums.

Back in the day, Wang was slender and good-looking while Du was short, already sporting those signature oversized glasses. There was a group photo of them as students, each posed at the far end of the class. 

“We didn’t even talk then,” Du said.

Leafing through the black-and-white shots, I reveled in this intimate look at Chinese life during Mao’s dreaded Cultural Revolution, when the West was demonized and the curtain on everyday Chinese was pulled shut.

Du showed me pictures of her at work, wearing a white lab coat as she and my mother-in-law tested fluorescent powder for military use.

There was a photo of her grandmother, taken at the turn of the century. And one of her father, whom she said worked in a missile factory.

“Were any of those missiles ever pointed at Americans?” I asked.

“Oh, no, no,” she assured me with a wave of her hand.

But what about during the Korean War?

She paused.

“Oh well,” she blushed. “Maybe.”

When we were done eating, Du packed us a care package of all the leftover bread. My wife offhandedly mentioned the quality of the sunflower seeds and she quickly packed those up as well, slipping a few tangerines into my coat pocket.

It was like telling your American host he makes a good cup of morning coffee and he  immediately gives you a pound of beans to take home.

Together, we four hopped on a bus and toured the Summer Palace, a vast spread of lakes, gardens and monuments built during the reign of Ci Xi during the Qing Dynasty.

Despite the poverty of 1880s China, Wang said, the so-called Empress Dowager used naval funds to build her palace. He also advised us to wait until sunset to photograph the main bridge, when the span turned golden in the fading light.

At dusk, as the wind picked up, we said our goodbyes. 

I shook Wang’s hand. Not only did he and his wife prepare us a lavish meal, with enough leftovers for the week, I said, but they played informative tour guides as well.

They smiled at that, waving as they walked away, content with the knowledge that their reputation as the consummate Chinese hosts very much intact.