Soups: Light & Hearty

Soup is the universal soother, in China as well as the rest of the world. Thick or thin, simple or complex, it is the comforting and (in China) always-hot bowlful that warms the spirit and makes the food slide down. In a Chinese meal, soup typically comes at the end of the eating when the belly needs soothing, although in the informality of a Chinese home it is often brought out somewhat earlier, and then sipped between bitefuls or spooned over rice.

I have eaten Chinese soups in at least three settings, and the style of the soup and the implements with which one ate it changed accordingly. The first, which is the way I like soup best, is the simple huge bowlful that contains a whole meal—the thick vegetable chowder or the pint of real chicken stock crammed with a dozen won ton, which I relished at roadside stalls in Taiwan and which sated me, body and soul, for the rest of the day. This was the sort of soup one ate with a chipped spoon and hearty slurping, occasionally with the aid of chopsticks and preferably with one’s elbows atop the table in a posture that spelled business.