SLIDE SHOW: Mid-Autumn With Food and Family
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| Waipo holds a plate of here sister's shun yu , a braised, sweet treatment of freshwater fish. |
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Hairy crabs being scrubbed before cooking.
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Prawn and pork cakes, stir-fried with fresh shiitake mushrooms.
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A Chinese meal begins when the last dish leaves the wok.
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| 5 OF 10 |
| Sword beans fried with garlic in the foreground, and lotus stuffed with glutinous rice and cooked with rock sugar in the back. Sometimes, on the Shanghainese table, dishes are dessert-sweet. |
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| Tofu with crabmeat and roe. Click here for a recipe . |
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The biggest hairy crabs were the meal's final flourish.
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The roe was delicious.
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| 9 OF 10 |
Though we'd all finished eating long before, Waipo was still picking through the shells, searching for a few forgotten pieces of meat.
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| 10 OF 10 |
| For old Shanghainese ladies, celebrating usually means cooking and eating for days on end. |
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Everything we ate was brought by Yipo, and Waipo seemed mostly pleased with her shopping. "In Qingpu, we never cared about what kind of clothes we'd wear," she explained, "but we always had to have the best food. Our crabs are always excellent. But this fish is too old."
Then we cracked open the crabs, separating feathery legs and mossy claws from their bodies. We shimmied meat from their appendages and broke their carapaces in half to reveal glistening orange eggs. Eating hairy crabs, like lifting the world's largest country out of poverty, is a study in determination.
As we ate, Waipo talked about the family she left behind. "My father was good to the peasants whom he leased the land to, and so when the Communists took over they helped him hide. Still, in the 1960s they had a very difficult time. People found out their identity, and it was very bad to have family that had fled to Taiwan. Suddenly, they were forced to hide their past from everyone. To be someone else."
The shells piled up on the table, mostly in tiny fragments that you let drop discreetly from mouth to plate. These hairy crabs--a crustacean that I'm not usually fond of--were delicious when dunked in the sharp vinegar. The meat was sweet and didn't taste of murk, and the roe was luxuriously fatty.
The great military parade continued to float past on the television, and firecrackers rudely interrupted Waipo as she talked. "Life might have gotten better for some, but not for us. My parents became peasants, my sister was raised in a difficult time. Everything changed." Then she looked up and smiled with surprise, as if she'd just found something special that was hidden away.
"The last time I saw my father was in a photograph. The photograph was smuggled to Hong Kong, and then someone brought it to us in Taiwan. He was dressed in the blue worker's uniform. And he held a piece of cardboard in front of him, with three characters written on it. All it said was Wo Xiang Ni--I miss you."
Though we'd all finished eating long before, Waipo was still picking through the shells, searching for a few forgotten pieces of meat. Tomorrow, her sister would come with more.