Moveable Feast page 2
Over a first meal, May-May and her cousin share their nostalgia for dances and ice-skating outings in the period just after the Cultural Revolution, when both they and Beijing had one last burst of socialist innocence before entering the world-economy jungle. "When the news spread that the Gang of Four had been arrested," he tells me, for the benefit of my food research, "the shelves were emptied because everyone wanted to celebrate with a meal. There was no liquor to be had in the country."More learned in Chinese history than he looks, May-May's cousin quotes from a classical play: "The more that times get chaotic, the more Chinese want to eat."
One evening we meet Wu Gang et famille for a pre-arranged banquet at Au Mandarin, a swank, carving-filled second-story box just off the Champs Élysées. Our host is so self-effacing before intellectual types that I can hardly believe he's Andre Yang, founder of the Tse-Yang, the largest chain of luxury Chinese restaurants in the West. This godfather of Chinese cooking even rambles in a throaty whisper, Brando-style. Soon, he mentions, he'll be adding to his empire a Tse-Yang in Beirut -- largely at the urging of frequent Parisian guests, the family of the Lebanese president.
Mr. Yang's secret of success is to keep the ingredients high quality and the preparation traditional -- a point proved by basic but excellent versions of smoked fish appetizer, cold drunken chicken, lobster claws in black bean, heavily-sauced spare ribs. "I've got more items with bones on this menu because the Chinese like that -- and also because the foreigners tend to have false teeth!"
Mr. Yang has survived partnerships with a Chinese soprano and with the infamous first husband of Jiang Qing, the more infamous Madame Mao. "He was a very educated man, but he liked to drink and he always offended people. Still, when the Cultural Revolution was at its height and his past became known in the press, we had lines outside the restaurant."
The evening ends with a hair-raising story about a chef that Mr. Yang had been planning to hire, partially on the recommendation of May-May's cousin. This promising cook, winner of competitions in China, had been working in a restaurant owned by the son of the manager of Beijing's Great Wall Sheraton, a favorite hangout of the foreign press back in the bad old days. Apparently, this spoiled scion of the People's Republic had certain strange notions about how to handle the great masses whom he employed. After months of failing to be paid, the head chef had set a deadline for taking his case to an Austrian lawyer. Just around that time, the chef had disappeared. Several weeks later, the newspapers had printed the gruesome picture of a severed arm found in the snow of the Austrian alps. The kitchen help recognized a characteristic cooking burn on the hand of the arm. Police were led to the owner's chain-saw and found traces of human bone. Now I'd been given the ultimate proof of my conviction that every aspect of Chinese life -- and death -- was interrelated with Chinese restaurants.
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