Modern sources on Chinese cuisine were also important. Chief among these was the remarkable Chinese Gastronomy by Hsiangju Lin and Tsuifeng Lin. This exceptional book helped me grasp the formal goals of taste and texture as well as principles of menu development. I am indebted as well to the scholarly essays on cuisine through Chinese history by K. C. Chang, Michael Freeman, Frederick W. Mote, and Jonathan Spence, collected in Food and Chinese Culture, edited by K. C. Chang. An academic paper titled “Tasting the Good and the Beautifuclass="underline" The Aestheticization of Eating and Drinking in Traditional Chinese Culture” by Da’an Pan was also helpful, as was the book Chinese System of Food Cures by Henry C. Lu.
Though this is a novel, and almost all of the characters are imagined, some actual historical events and personages make appearances within its pages. Tan Zhuanqing, Liang Wei’s master in the Forbidden City, was a very famous chef in his time as well as an admired scholar; his name is still frequently invoked in Chinese cooking circles. Peng Changhai, Liang Wei’s youthful compadre in the palace along with Xie Huangshi, was a real-life apprentice in the palace; the restaurant he went on to found, based on the cuisine teachings of Tan Zhuanqing, was considered one of Beijing’s greatest restaurants in the 1950s. The Empress Dowager really did have a late-life lust for the little broom-corn cakes (xiao wo tou) she ate on the road during the royal family’s flight from the Boxer Rebellion. She also, according to culinary legend, did commission her chefs to create the flat sesame cakes stuffed with minced meat (shao bing jia rou mo) after she saw them in a dream. I am grateful to the kitchen staff at Fang Shan, the imperial-style restaurant in Beihai Park in Beijing, for showing me how to make them.
The eponymous book excerpted throughout this novel – the 1925 food classic written by Sam’s grandfather – is a fiction: it does not exist. The ideas it expresses are based on the classical sources noted above. The Children’s Rights Treaty is also an invention; there is no such treaty. Several restaurants mentioned in the book are real, though: Fang Shan, Gou Bu Li, Lou Wai Lou, and Shan Wai Shan.
Readers who would like to taste the food in this book (almost every dish described is in the repertoire of a contemporary Chinese chef), who wish to cook the food themselves (some of these chefs gave their recipes), or who simply want to know where to find great food as they travel to China, are invited to visit my Web site, www.nicolemones.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would never have come to fruition without my exceptional editor, Jane Rosenman. Her patience, knowledge, and good nature were topped only by her unerring, almost uncanny ability to see the book’s strengths and help me maximize them. My agent, Bonnie Nadell, saw the potential in this book from my very first enunciation of its concept and supported it all the way, from the first stages of research to the last page. Katya Rice’s thoughtful manuscript editing improved the book greatly. The Houghton Mifflin team is the stuff authors’ dreams are made of, especially Taryn Roeder and Sanj Kharbanda.
I will always be indebted to Ruth Reichl for encouraging me to write about Chinese cuisine for Gourmet and for her willingness to publish articles that place Chinese cuisine in the wider context of culture, history, mindset, and patterns of emigration. My editors at the magazine, Jocelyn Zuckerman and Amanda Agee, helped me learn to do better work. In large part it was through the research and writing I undertook for them that I gained the knowledge and confidence to write this novel.
Many friends have been supportive, but Barbara Peters of the Poisoned Pen in Phoenix, Arizona, deserves a special thanks. She has always encouraged me, even writing to me between books to urge me to keep going. Every writer knows the moments of selfdoubt. She helped me move past those, and I often found myself writing with her in mind.
My great friend Evelyn Madsen accompanied me on a research trip to Shaoxing and Hangzhou, bringing her good humor and excellent palate to a whirlwind schedule of restaurant visits, chef interviews, and scouting jaunts for scenes. It is my policy to go everywhere my characters go, and she made it more fun.
I’m grateful to my friends Tom Saunders and Nancy Beers, each of whom gave me a private place to work when I needed to block out this world in order to conjure up another one. Thanks too to my foodie friends Anne Sprecher, Linda Burum, John Wong, and Ruth Parvin, for sharing tips and rumors on good restaurants and for our fun and informative outings.
My terrific husband, Paul Mones, has gone far beyond supporting my writing to being an invaluable resource on Chinese cuisine. A talented fusion cook who as a teenager washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant to learn technique and went on to win the North Carolina state pork championship, he chose a Chinese restaurant for our first date, where it was instantly apparent that we were well matched. In my thirty years of travel to China, he is the only person I have ever seen climb up on restaurant chairs to photograph everything that comes to the table.
My last and deepest thanks are for my wonderful sons, Ben and Luke. Not only do they appreciate Chinese food, they have always offered love, support, and a generous understanding of all it takes to write a book. I’m not sure that without them I could ever have produced this one.
About the Author
NICOLE MONES is the prize-winning author of the novels The Last Chinese Chef, Lost in Translation, and A Cup of Light, which have been published in more than twenty-five countries. Her nonfiction writing on China has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Gourmet, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. She is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. For more, visit nicolemones.com.
