Ulrich Baer - Beggars Chicken

Beggars Chicken
By Ulrich Baer

ISBN-13: 978-988-16163-6-4

2012 Ulrich Baer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in material form, by any means, whether graphic, electronic, mechanical or other, including photocopying or information storage, in whole or in part. May not be used to prepare other publications without written permission from the publisher.

Published by Earnshaw Books Ltd. (Hong Kong).

Chickens up! a gruff cook with a smudged white cap yelled behind the plywood screen separating the kitchen of the Lou Wai Lou restaurant from the dining area. In the narrow passageway a group of waiters jostled each other as if trying to board a bus at rush hour. Wen Li, clad in a blue service uniform, reached for a heavy platter. Taking your time, huh? the cook snapped through the long window where they passed the food from the kitchen to the wait staff. Dont make me throw it, he threatened, and shoved the platter toward Wen Li, who quickly grabbed it by its wooden handles.

Thank you! the young waiter yelled and loaded the platter onto a wheeled cart that he pushed toward the brightly lit dining room. By the time he had reached a table by the window he slowed down and obsequiously nodded at the seated diners. For a moment he stood there impassively while four waitresses in matching dresses shaded different hues of red arranged dishes, bowls, cups, saucers, and cans of Coke and beer on a table in a way that left a spot in the center free.

Wen Li had been promoted to headwaiter thanks to his skills with razor-sharp knives and his forbearance in dealing with the equally perilous short-tempered cooks from Jiangsu province who thought nothing of flinging a plate of hot food when the waiters were too slow, or forgot their thank yous. But his forbearance had a purpose. And right at this moment Wen Li was close to the point during his evening shift where all of that mule-like patience finally bore fruit. With his closely cropped hair, hint of sideburns, and white, long gloves, he waited patiently amidst the chattering tourists who had come to taste the local specialty.

Beggars Chicken, he finally announced, and all eyes were directed at the lump of piping hot mud in which a plump hen had been baked all night.

Shortly after arriving in the resort town of Hangzhou from his hometown two years ago with a useless high school degree, 80 yuan in his pocket, and the phone number of Mothers cousin scribbled on a piece of paper, Wen Li had started as a bus boy at the restaurant. A few weeks later he had been asked to pick up one of the waiters shifts, and after that he lobbied the manager relentlessly to be solely responsible for serving Beggars Chicken. He volunteered for late shifts, scoured the soup station, checked and emptied rodent traps and, his least favorite job, hosed down the greasy floor of the dish room after peak times in summer. His perseverance paid off. The manager placed him on the floor, and eventually the temperamental cooks shouted only his name whenever the dish came up.

Wen Li, chickens uuuuup! they yelled from the kitchen and neither threats nor pleas could keep their shouting down. Get the chicken NOW! their voices boomed as they pushed the platter toward the edge where it would drop as surely as the coins that children cast into placid West Lake from the peaked bridge, unless Wen Li hustled and reached for it in time. But it was not as if there had been serious competition from the other waiters for the job. None of them relished the task of slicing open a bagged chicken from a hot pack of mud while a round of hungry diners watched their every move. When Wen Li had first cut open the hot dish, however, he had seen something from which he could not turn his eye.

Beggars Chicken, Wen Li announced solemnly when the waitresses had stepped out of the way. Without a glance at the customers he picked up a small mallet and tapped at the ash-colored pod on the metal dish. When the mud fissured he used his gloved hands to crack open the pod. His hands briefly disappeared into the baked pile and with a kneading, twisting motion like a doctor assisting a birth, he lifted the lumpy bag from the broken pod on to a second, porcelain platter. Wen Li picked up large shears from the cart, leaned his upper body back and, the glistening steel blades suspended in mid-air, halted for a moment.

This was his moment to focus.

Whats he going to do next? a heavy man with matted-down hair said to a young woman in a silk jacket seated next to him. He smacked his lips while the woman indulgently beheld Wen Lis serious countenance, mistaking the young waiters pause for a dramatic flourish meant to whet their appetites and justify the restaurants high prices. Indeed, Wen Li was about to perform a challenging trick.

He closed his eyes, drew in breath through parted lips, and with a single cut, sliced open the bag. When hot steam rushed past Wen Li, the table was instantly enveloped in the chickens fragrant scent. But for Wen Li the noisy tourists with eyes widened in anticipation, the waitresses lined up like chorus girls, the shouting cooks, the red-faced manager, the bright lights, clanging dishes, noisy fans and chattering crowd all vanished, for a few long, unsounded moments, in the hissing steam.

Gone was the restaurant; gone was the fairy tale, recounted by Wen Li for all diners that understood Chinese, according to which a beggar had served to a traveler a chicken he had hidden between rocks near his puny fire, only for the guest to turn out to be the emperor in disguise who, upon tasting the chicken, promptly appointed the beggar to become the highly paid and honored chef to the court. In the briefest of moments while the diners waited with watering mouths for the steam to clear and to taste this legendary dish, Wen Li found himself transported back in time to a moment he couldnt forget.

He was a schoolboy in his fourth-grade classroom on a spring morning that had been as unseasonably hot as it had been devastating.

Look! Look! a girls scream had pierced the stagnant classroom where students sat hunched over their work. Only her shouting was real to Wen Lis ears now, for this moment that stretched for him into two long days while the diners around the table ogled the stewed chicken.

Look out the window! the girl cried out. Wen Li could see her clearly in his minds eye. That voice! It was the same girl who had brought a mottled black-and-yellow chick to school earlier that fourth-grade spring, and left him speechless when she had chosen him to hold it. He could still feel the tiny birds rapid heartbeat against his palm. Now that same girl had raced to the classroom window, pointing down.

Quickly other students followed her lead.

Look at the fence! another student screamed when he had reached the window.

Get back in your seats! Wen Lis geography teacher had shouted in vain. Wen Li had never heard Teachers voice crack like this. She was a modestly pretty and usually mild-mannered woman whose face was now a tight grimace above her blue cotton jacket and knotted white scarf. The students liked Teacher and were mostly eager to please her. But now they ignored her in a stampede toward the windows.

Move aside! Teacher repeated.

Look! Look! Someones on the fence! a boy yelled out.

Sit down! Teachers voice rang in Wen Lis ear. Other students pushed forward so that he could not move. Get back to your seats!

Someone is on the fence!

I saw him fall down outside the window!

I saw him too!

The childrens shrill voices bounced off the smudged windowpanes and volleyed around Wen Lis head.