Zhang was one of those hundreds of quiet, plodding men who kept Chinatown alive. He had come to America as an exchange student decades ago, dreaming of becoming a civil engineer back home, designing apartments for the developing Sichuan. When he consumed alcohol for the first time at a college party, he’d forgotten those goals forever. The drink consumed him right back—leaving him to pick up the pieces of his life for the first time when it was nearly half over. Yet he had in the end; he’d learned a few phrases like “here’s your bill” and “don’t cheat,” enough to bargain at the market. Broke and broken, unable to return to China, he created for himself a little slice of home where he was.
He ran a little restaurant tucked in a back alley. In truth, it was an exaggeration to call it a restaurant. It was really a stall, with its rickety bamboo doors that were kept open by a broken brick to prevent them from getting stuck; the faded red spring-festival paper, peeling off with the wind; the dusty bulbs casting a dampened lighting that felt almost atmospheric. Yet he never bothered to change things, as he knew these were the reasons his customers came to visit, even more than the authentic Sichuan dishes: noodles in hot chili oil, stinky tofu, chicken claws boiled in a sour-and-spicy soup. His customers were college students from the nearby University of San Francisco—young men and women with pock-marks over their faces, plastic foreign bills still in their pockets, their accents apparent despite all their efforts. They came because the splintering walls reminded them of their childhood homes, the dustiness of the lighting of the rusting oil lamps which lit their summer nights. They did not mind the dinginess; they had grown up amongst it, had grown to love it, to see it as home.
It was a sweltering summer afternoon when Zhang received his first new customers in ages; a young couple. It was immediately apparent that they were without the intimacy which came from a lengthy relationship. The man bore no resemblance to the majority of his other customers; he was tanned, and despite his Chinese appearance, he looked up quizzically when Zhang greeted him in Mandarin. He stepped in cautiously and tentatively, as though he was a traveler just arriving in a foreign land. The woman was rather tacky-looking, with a worn pink purse and a matching dress ripped at the seams; she hailed Zhang enthusiastically. They sat at the counter and each ordered a bowl of beef wontons. The woman took the pair of chopsticks in hand; the man asked for a spoon.
Even Zhang could tell he wasn’t impressed with her. The man watched her mouth insistently: her lips painted more brightly red than the American style; the way they curved upward too much, as though they were used to creating different sounds; the gap between her two front teeth which would have been corrected by an orthodontist, had she been born here. She slurped at the wontons with an intensity that betrayed her hunger for home, only stopping to cast around a nostalgic glance at the decor around them. When they were finished, she clung to the counter, examining it intently as though she could be taken back to her parents’ dinner table by her pure imagination. The man was anxious to leave, to be free of the smog, of the language others spoke and he could not decipher, of the strange foods they were consuming. He pulled on her arm until she let go of the table, letting herself be dragged out.
They came every Friday, always ordering the same dishes. Zhang took to preparing these bowls ahead of time, watching the same patterns play out. The woman would chatter about nothing in particular in her nasally accent. The man would sit, uncomfortably and silently, rocking back and forth, as though to will the groaning creaks of his chair to drown her out. The man was one of those who were not mean-natured, but he did have a selfishness, a natural need for reassurance which came from his youth. He did not mean to lead one on, but could not help his revelation which came from her—that he could be loved, admired. He may have found her quite disgusting, but kept her around because he enjoyed the reassurance that one might be dedicated to him, and the pleasant sensation of having a woman interested in him. He sat, determined to trade his comfort for the adoring words she spoke, determined to ignore the foreign-ness of the mouth which pronounced them and her differences which drove them apart. He tried to ignore the clattering of mahjong pieces, and wrinkled his nose when the young lady asked him to buy anything else, like spring rolls with oxtails.
One day in spring, the woman came alone and waited, sitting with the two steaming bowls of wontons in hand. She checked her phone once, twice, three times. She tapped her foot, then tapped her chopsticks against the noodle bowl. She sat and watched a group of elderly folks gossip for about an hour before she gave up and headed out. She had not eaten any of the food.
From then on, this became a pattern; she came each Friday to sit at the counter with her two bowls of wonton soup, which always remained untouched. Holding onto them for warmth, she listened to orders being taken and shouted to the kitchen, the cheers of old men as they bet on mahjong, and the whispers of grandmothers worrying about their children. She examined every detail of the restaurant; the crackled paint of the roof, causing steam to float through the top; the oil smeared on the countertop, running to the floor; and the ink tapestries hung haphazardly on the walls, their images softened by age. She was as silent as those women in those paintings, silent with want and waiting.
One afternoon in summer, nearly exactly a year after they had first come, Zhang made only one bowl of wontons. It sat steaming in the spot where the young woman usually was. She came and sat in her usual spot. She hesitated, seeming to notice the absence of the second bowl; yet she was unwilling to acknowledge this difference. Eventually she reached out tentatively and cradled her hands around the single bowl, moving it with a swaying motion, as though she were rocking a baby. She stared straight ahead, straight at Zhang, in a way that seemed expectant—as though he were supposed to do something, as though he had made her a promise.
Suddenly, without knowing what he meant to do, Zhang reached over and seized one of her hands in both of his own. He gripped it tightly and said, “Us lao shang （老乡, those sharing a common home,) we have to watch out for each other, all right? This one is on the house, all right?”
The woman nods and looks down silently. She slurps down the wontons, letting her tears fall free to flavor the soup.
Tanya is a written and spoken word artist residing on the California coast. They write about their experiences in the cultural melting pot of San Francisco, and about their unique cross-cultural perspective as a Chinese American.