Category: Cross-cultural

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I finti fiori

I went to the garden after the rain.  The tiny blue petals of dayflowers seemed more resplendent than usual.  Their vines and leaves spread on the grounds, stretching beyond the edge of the terrace.  Considered “noxious” and “invasive” by many, they are welcome guests in my garden.

I first encountered these small jewels when I was in high school.  One day I saw a patch of dayflowers sprawled along a ditch on the roadside.  The color of the flowers caught my eyes.  I was also amused by the smallness of them.

Our school was in the suburb of Taipei on a hill near the National Palace Museum.  Every year, as courtesy, we were invited to visit the Museum.  There, I found dayflowers on a handscroll among other “auspicious” species: peonies, lotus, hydrangea, magnolia, and the like.  I was mesmerized by the vividness of the image.  At the same time, the irony of roadside weeds becoming a treasure and being displayed at a Museum also didn’t escape me.  There is only a thin line between arts and reality.

When I began building a garden on our terrace a few years ago, I was surprised to see dayflowers popping up at one corner.  Effortlessly they connected my parallel lives on two sides of the ocean; my past and present.  I saw myself standing in the gallery, fixating at the painted flowers.

I love flowers.  Watching them fade and wither away saddens me.  I am not good at keeping their images with paint brushes.  I was good at making silk flowers in my teen years: cutting leaves and petals out of ribbons; bending them by hand or pressing them with hot iron; and wrapping them onto wires.  Petal by petal; leaf by leaf; stem by stem; beautiful flowers would grow out my hands.  The exuberant dyes made them more vivacious then the real ones.

I loved making peonies.  They were flowers that I only read in classic literature. They were flowers that I only saw in paintings and photos.  With ribbons, I could bring them into reality.  Out of my fingers, amazing things happened.

These days, I grew peonies in my garden: classical crimson ones and pale pink “Mrs. F. D Roosevelt.”  In late spring, the buds gradually grow rounder and fuller.  As they quietly unwrap, gentle fragrances fill the air.  And, I know that they will come back year after year.

“Ma i fior ch’io faccio, ahimè!
Non hanno odore. . .”

“But the flowers that I make, alas!
Don’t have fragrance. . .”
Mimì in Puccini, La Bohème, Act 1

YouTube: “A Collection of Spring Fortune” 春祺集錦 by Wang Chengpei 汪承霈, Qing dynasty.
The brocade handscroll mentioned in the post is housed in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

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Dad’s gourmet palate

This entry is part 13 of 28 in the series Goldfish

Dad ate strange things.

He enjoyed takuan, yellow pickled daikon radishes.  Mom said that, during his student days in Japan, he survived on takuan and rice.  He also loved raw sliced daikon with soy sauce.  The uncooked radishes are spicy and earthy. . . not the most desirable combination for kids.

Dried mullet roes (烏魚子) are Taiwanese and Japanese delicacy.  They are salted, pressed and dried.  The final products, in dark salmon color, shape like elongated butterflied pork chops.  Roasted lightly and sliced, they are often paired with scallions or garlic green and served with beer or Chinese liquor.  I never understood why dad savored these salty and fishy things as if they were the greatest thing the ocean had to offer.

Dad liked burned food.  If/when there was burned, crusty rice stuck on the bottom of the pot, mom would scrap off the crust and offer it to dad.  I never had a chance to enjoy steaks with dad.  I wonder if he would ask for the pieces that dropped down to the pit.

We all liked soft white bread and, sometimes, breads with raisins, sweet cream fillings or other tasty morsels.  Dad like bread with hard crust!  He called them French bread.  He would tear the long stick apart and eat it plain.  I didn’t know any French people.  They must have very strong teeth.

Dad often brought us treats on his way home:  steamed buns, dumplings and scallion pancakes. . . My favorites were pastries with flaky crust from a nearby shop.  They were the size of an adult palm.  The sweet ones were filled with red (adzuki) bean paste; the savory ones, meat or chopped vegetables.  Most of the time, they were fresh out of the oven.

In winter month, dad would bring home roasted yams.  They were hung and roasted in large clay urn-shape furnaces.  The vender would reach into the furnace with a hook to turn or to retrieve them.  The yams were sweet, soft and HOT.  I didn’t always eat the skins.  But if they were smoky and syrupy, I would lick on them.

Dad would also get roasted corns.  Salty and a little burned, I wasn’t too crazy about them.  Later, when sweet corns became popular, dad wouldn’t eat them.  He said corns shouldn’t be sweet.  To these days, I still wonder how corns tasted like when dad was growing up.

Although mom would not prevent us from enjoying the treats, she was never thrilled when dad came home with them.  She said that having treats would ruin our appetites for dinner.  Well, that never happened to me.  Treats were treats.  Dinner was dinner.  The more the merrier.