My wife’s family keep asking me if I “like Chinese things”. We recently went back to Hong Kong to visit them. We have been back to Hong Kong many times and although they know me quite well by now, they still ask.
“Do you like Chinese things?”
They seem unduly concerned about this. They seem anxious. Uneasy. Fretful. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure if they are worried about it because they assume, incorrectly I might add, that I do not like Chinese things, or if it is just simple curiosity. The way I might casually ask them if they like baseball and hot dogs or California wine and jazz music.
“Do you like tea?”
“Do you like dim sum?”
“Do you like Chinese calligraphy?”
“Do you like Chinese music?”
Several times each day. One day, while wandering through Hong Kong’s Central district, my wife’s brother suddenly stopped walking and looked around. He spun his body in a semi-circle and waved his arms in the air, indicating the bustling city around us.
“Do you like Hong Kong?”
“I do indeed,” I assured him.
He smiled and seemed satisfied, but I know he will ask again. Perhaps tomorrow. He asked the same question yesterday when we were up at The Peak looking out over the grand view of the city below and the vista beyond. We have great views in San Francisco too, but I declared this particular view as one of the best in the world. Later that evening, we were sitting at a table in a crowded restaurant. There were eleven of us, working our way through a large Cantonese family-style meal and one of my wife’s sisters asked, “Do you like Chinese food?”
“Very much,” I responded.
In fact, pretty much everything I pick up with my chopsticks, I’m asked, “Do you like that?”
When I say, “Yes, I like it,” they say, “Try this.”
They spin the lazy Susan so a different dish comes to a stop in front of me. They reach for a serving spoon and ladle some into my bowl and watch me eat it. Then they ask, “Do you like that?”
Even if I don’t like it, which is rare, I tell them that I do. Sometimes they try to trick me. At one meal one of my wife’s brothers-in-law put something into my bowl and I ate it. It was spicy and flavourful.
“Do you like that?” He asked, but he had a strange expression on his face. Okay, I wondered. What is this? I looked at my wife and she told me that it was coagulated pig blood. Her brother-in-law started laughing, so of course I had to eat more.
“Mmm, mmm, mmm,” I said jokingly, rubbing my stomach like a kid.
He laughed again and then served something else into my bowl and asked, “Do you like this?”
One afternoon, while walking through the teeming shopping alleys of Causeway Bay, I stopped and looked through the open doors of a small, cramped store and then entered. I looked around for a few minutes and ended up buying a small wooden statue of the Buddha. Back out on the street, my brother-in-law asked me what I had bought. I showed it to him, and he took a look at it and asked, “Do you like that?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “That’s why I bought it.”
He went back into the store and when he came out, moments later, he handed me another small statue of the Buddha. This one, translucent and gleaming, was carved of jadeite.
“For you,” he said and handed it to me. “Now you have two.” He was smiling. Then he asked me, “Do you like it?”
I think it is pride. They are proud to be Chinese. They have pride in their heritage. Pride in their culture. In their legacy. They have pride in their traditions and customs. And they should. Someone once told me that the Chinese were writing poetry and painting delicate landscapes when we were still covering our bodies in mud and swinging from trees. They should be proud of who they are, of what their culture represents and how it appears to outsiders. I’m an outsider. I am married to a Chinese woman, their sister. In fact, I smilingly refer to myself as an honorary Chinese person. But they still, I think, wonder about me. They’re not quite sure. The other side of that coin is that I want them to like American things. I would want them to like where I grew up and what I did and the food I ate. If her brother were to come to San Francisco, I would show him the Golden Gate Bridge and Coit Tower. I would take him to Chinatown and out to Golden Gate Park. I would take him to a ball game or a jazz club. I would buy him a hot dog and a Coke. I would buy him a real San Francisco hamburger at Clown Alley, the best burger joint in the city.
We went into another store in Causeway Bay that sold pretty much everything. Tourist stuff. Kitschy stuff. Clothing. Bric-a-brac. You name it. Teapots. Cups. Bowls. More statues of the Buddha. I had wandered over to an area where there was a wall of Chinese kimonos hanging on display. They were shiny and radiated many colours. They were silken and smooth to the touch. I was thumbing through some of them, stroking the silk, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see my brother-in-law, smiling, holding a man’s silk kimono.
“Do you like this?” he asked. “I will buy it for you.”
It was bright yellow and embroidered with blue dragons.
“Wow!” I said. “It’s nice.” But I hesitated. I did not want to sound ungrateful or rude. “But, no,” I said. “Thank you. Really. It is very nice. But I would never wear it.”
“Are you sure?”
I was sure.
Later that evening, during dinner, he reached across the table and handed me a brown paper bag. I gave him that, what’s this, look. He was smiling. I looked inside the bag and saw the yellow kimono.
I have never worn it.
The following day, we were in a store on Hollywood Road. We went in to look at some plates and bowls that I had noticed through the window. Once inside, I found myself admiring an embroidered silk wall hanging. I was captivated by the explosion of colours in the intricate thread work. My wife told me that it was called The Hundred Birds Visit the Phoenix. It depicted many birds of all shapes and sizes, in reds and purples and greens and blues and yellows. There was umber blending to orange blending to crimson. There was violet blending to plum blending to amethyst blending to cobalt. The brilliant colours were set against a dazzling white silky background. The phoenix was perched in a tree, reposed in grandiose opulence. The feathers of its peacock-like tail swept down resplendently. The phoenix resembled, I thought, a Lady Amherst’s pheasant in its stunning voluptuousness. There were geese and ducks and sparrows and songbirds of all types surrounding the phoenix. There were quails and pheasants and hawks and even a peacock. The other birds had all flown in and gathered round to pay homage to the magnificent phoenix.
It was exquisitely beautiful.
I asked the clerk how much it cost. Her answer took me aback. I decided that while beautiful, it was just way too much money. I offered less, thinking I would bargain a little, as is sometimes the custom in Hong Kong. The clerk shook her head, no, and not being much of a bargainer anyway, I reluctantly walked on. I wandered through the store, but I was drawn back to the tapestry of The Hundred Birds Visit the Phoenix. The intensity of the colours was luminous and glorious. I decided to make another offer to the clerk but alas, she again shook her head.
The phoenix in Chinese mythology is quite different from the one in Greek mythology. In Greek mythology, the phoenix that most Westerners are familiar with, dies within fire and then rises from the ashes, representing rebirth. In Chinese culture, the phoenix represents different things. It is usually represented as having the beak of a rooster, the face of a swallow, the neck of a snake, the tail of a fish and the feathers of a peacock. It is normally female in depiction, but it combines both male and female, or feng-huang, as it is known. It exists in and of itself. It simply is. It symbolises good, virtue, grace, balance. It is a union of yin and yang. It embodies love and harmony.
The next day, my wife’s brother presented me with The Hundred Birds Visit the Phoenix. He had apparently seen me admire it and secretly bought it while I was at the other end of the store looking at something else. He waited until we were sitting at a round table in a dim sum restaurant. He had just poured me a cup of tea and then he handed it to me. It was rolled up and wrapped in crepe paper. I did not ask how much he paid for it, but I suspected it was considerably less than I would have, had I gone ahead and bought it. I tried to say that I couldn’t accept such a nice expensive gift. It was too precious.
He held his hand up, palm toward me. “No,” he said. “You like Chinese things. You can hang it on your wall.”
Which is just what I did when I took it home.
Later that day, one of my wife’s nieces asked me, “Uncle Jeff, do you like Chinese girls?”
“Well,” I said. “I married your say-yi, didn’t I?”
Say-yi in Cantonese means fourth aunt.
She stood a moment and seemed to consider my answer. Then she smiled and nodded her head and walked away.
Header image by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho.
How to cite: Beyl, Jeff. “Do You Like Chinese Things?” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 31 May 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/05/31/chinese-things.
Jeff Beyl writes about nature, fly-fishing, music, geology, surfing, and the ocean. He has been published in several magazines such as Big Sky Journal, Outside Bozeman, Montana Fly-fishing, Idaho Magazine, Northwest Sportsman, Ocean Magazine, Snowy Egret Literary Journal. His book, A Conversation With the Earth, was published in 2020. He has travelled widely through Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. He is a jazz guitarist and photographer, scuba diver and fly-fisherman. He lives in Seattle with his wife. [All contributions by Jeff Beyl.]