A Sichuan Diaspora Daughter’s Kitchen

  You must teach yourself how to carry loan words, tiny seeds gift-wrapped like hand-me-down heirlooms as you crisscross past borders. How do you cook a dish called 虎皮辣椒， Hu Pi La Jiao, “Tiger-Skin Hot Peppers,” when you only have bell peppers? No planting guides exist for foreign veggies that haven’t yet grown roots and sprouted overseas. No family recipes readied you for the meandering map of codeswitching from Sichuanhua to academic Mandarin to every shade of English accent. You grow spicy green syllables in clay pots on a west-facing balcony with never enough heat. Nourish them with cloudy water you collected after washing rice, a habit you picked up from Wai Gong, who once lugged buckets uphill from the changing shorelines of the Yangtze. You name your potted creations after imaginary friends, spirits left behind when you boarded your first flight alone at age eleven, a one-way ticket to Vancouver with no return date. New peppers grow to bursting, light sparks teasing your tongue without setting it on fire. You pair homegrown words with slang, ground pork from a local butcher, the twice-removed cousin of meat sellers disappearing from former alleys. Add three spoons of soy sauce idioms. Sprinkle a fistful of garlic and sugar-coated words. Marinate phrases with salty grammar and a pinch of allusions to break the syntax of rule-inventors disguised as rule-breakers. Throw in three times the laoganma chili sauce you think you need, then add another spoonful just in case. Wait for the flavours to seep in, so you can 打牙祭, dayaji, make an offering for the cracks between your teeth. You’re always, always hungry.