Peking

MY SERVANT WAKES ME

My servant wakes me: “Master, it is broad day.

Rise from bed; I bring you bowl and comb.

Winter comes and the morning air is chill;

Today Your Honour must not venture abroad.”

When I stay at home, no one comes to call;

What must I do with the long, idle hours?

Setting my chair where a faint sunshine falls.

I have warmed wine and opened my poetry-books.

PO CHU-I

The flavour of Peking was in the cheap restaurants, where tiers of paotse, buns stuffed with pork and pork fat, cooked in a cloud of steam. How good to come in from the freezing cold, and warm oneself, the hot bun warming the hands even before one bit into it. Or to look into a big bowl of steaming noodles, stir it up with sauce, hunch over it, and gulp it down in big mouthfuls. The coarse food was full of robust flavour, uncomplicated by niceties. Thick wheatcakes (laoping) were wrapped about raw spring onions (scallions) and raw garlic, eaten just like that. Do not confuse these with the translucent crêpes of Southern China, discussed later. Southerners complain that the Northern laoping are too thick, too coarse. But they must be like that, or they would not taste right. Li Liweng said: “Southerners cook noodles in a soup containing salt, vinegar, sauces and other ingredients. The soup is delicious, but the noodles are tasteless. But this is what they like. They might just as well be drinking soup.”