Looking back to 2003, everyone involved in the publishing of Eats, Shoots & Leaves has reason to be proud, but at the time we were as surprised as anyone. Who knew there were millions waiting for a funny book on punctuation? Certainly I didn’t. My last novel had sold poorly (and I’d received a large advance), which made me poison as far as another publishing contract was concerned. So I decided that the next book must have intrinsically modest aims. The punctuation idea seemed ideal. Surely no sane publisher could ever say to me: “Lynne, I have to tell you that your book on punctuation has failed.”
When Jo Gwi-bun married Yi Don in the 1980s, he handed her a book of his family’s recipes and insisted she use them. “Of course, I had never heard of the book before, and I had no idea how to read the text. It wasn’t even written in modern Korean!” the 71-year-old woman, now known as Lady Jo, exclaims.
Lady Jo soon discovered the book was no ordinary compilation of family recipes. Instead, it was a centuries-old artifact credited as the first-ever cookbook in hangul, the Korean alphabet. Written by Lady Jang Gye-hyang around the year 1670, the manuscript is titled Eumsik-dimibang, or “Understanding the Taste of Food.” Some historians even believe it could be the first cookbook written by a woman in all of East Asia.
“I like the food here,” my dad would unfailingly say to me as he pulled open the aluminum-framed, oil-smudged glass door at Sun Lok Kee, a Mott Street stalwart that served beef chow fun and other Cantonese classics at any hour of the day until it burned down in 2002. “It has that nice smoky flavor.” My family moved to New York in the early ’80s, when I was 4-years-old, and those stir-fries from Sun Lok Kee, with their savory char and smoky aroma, are among my first and fondest taste memories.
Wok hei is the Cantonese name for that aroma (literally “wok energy” or “wok breath”). My dad has always been a wok hei fiend, first scouring the streets of Chinatown and later the suburbs of Boston for smoky clams in black bean sauce, fire-kissed stir-fried greens, beef chow fun that almost tastes grilled, or noodles that are singed just right.
They sent out a dove: it wobbled home,
wings slicked in a rainbow of oil,
a sprig of tinsel snagged in its beak,
a yard of fishing-line binding its feet.
If it was a clear day, you saw the suggestion of a city
far to the east. Every summer, I imagined that it was
several centuries ago: this was a safe hiding place