<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hot Pot<\/strong><\/p>\n For \u674e\u7f8e\u5176<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My friend and I selected vegetables, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nmushrooms, meat, and long strands of sliced seaweed.
\nI am illiterate, in China,
\nso she read out loud and checked all the right boxes.
\nOur server beamed as I snapped pictures
\nof her soft hands stirring sauce into meat
\nand lighting the hotplate embedded
\nin the centre of our table. I caught
\nmy friend’s open, expectant expression
\nas she watched the wok build steam. I caught
\nthe eye of the small girl sitting at the next
\ntable. I watched her, watching me. I know
\nthat I am alien in my strange skin.
\nThe girl twined her fingers into her mother’s
\nblue-dyed hair. I said to my friend, while we
\nwere eating, ‘It happened again, yesterday.
\nAn old man, in farmer\u2019s clothes, saw me
\ncome up out of the underground. He came
\nrunning over to shake my hand. He kept
\nsaying, \u201cHello! Hello! Hello!\u201d I’m glad
\nthat I could make him happy, doing so
\nlittle, but it always seems so strange
\nthat this should be so.\u2019 My friend thought,
\nthen carefully answered, chewing a fragment
\nof beef glazed in mild spice, \u2018 I think I know
\nwhy you make old farmers so happy.
\nWhen they were very young, China was poor.
\nThey’ve worked their whole lives for their country
\nto prosper, and now they are glad
\nbecause foreigners come to see what they’ve done.\u2019
\nEating Hot Pot is less a meal than a ritual.
\nYou cannot eat a Hot Pot alone.
\nFriends sit together, read over the menu,
\nthey consider what they each would like,
\nwhat would give their friends the greatest pleasure.
\nEveryone gets a small plate, a small bowl,
\ntheir own pair of chopsticks, but the meal,
\nthe pleasure, results from their joined efforts,
\nfrom disparate elements merging,
\nconverging into something marvelous
\nthat could not have existed before.<\/p>\n