Read My Several Worlds for Free Online Page A

Fen-chow liquor of Shansi. And of teas the green Lung-ching tea of Chekiang was our favorite, but also the Pu-êrh tea of Yünnan, plucked from the mountain named P’u-êrh, and the Chi-men red tea, and the Lin-an green tea of Anking or the jasmine and the Iron Lo-han tea of Foochow and the Hangchow chrysanthemum tea.
    As for fruits and vegetables, there are so many that only a very few could be mentioned. We spoke of the oranges of Hsin-hui, in Kwangtung, the pumelos of Sha-tien, in Kiangsi, the taro of Li-pu, the red and white dates of Tê-chow in Shangtung, the Chefoo apples and T’angshan pears, the watermelons and grapes of Sinkiang, the Shanghai muskmelons and the Peking persimmons, the kumquat oranges of Foochow, and the olives of Kwangtung province, the bamboo shoots and mushrooms of South Hunan, and the Kalgan mushrooms, Ho-p’u lichee nuts and Nanking lotus root.
    But other foods cannot be altogether forgotten, as for example, Techow smoked chicken, Canton steamed young pigeon, Nanking salted duck, Peking roast duck, Canton’s one-chicken-three-tastes, Fuchow hash, King-hua ham, Szechuan’s pickled salted greens, arrowroot from West Lake, a Peking summer drink made from sour prunes, mushroom oil from South Hunan, rice flour from Kwei-lin, bean curd and sauce from Anking in Anhwei province.
    And we stopped there only because one must not go on forever.
    The gala days were the days when we were invited to wedding and birthday feasts, and then the menu included a score and more of different dishes, each perfected by centuries of gourmets. For Chinese are always gourmets. The appearance of a dish, its texture and its flavor, are subjects for endless talk and comparison. A rich man will pay his cook a prince’s salary, and yet he will humbly heed the criticisms of his friends concerning a dish set before them, for in China cooking is pure art in its most fundamental and satisfying form, and when a dish is criticized by those who know all that it should be, none can take offense, since there is nothing personal in criticizing an art.
    One item of significance—the best dishes were always seasonal as well as local. I am a great believer in the seasons. Even here in my own world, I have no relish for sweet corn in January or strawberries in November. Such seasonal monstrosities are repulsive to me. I want my corn in August, young and green, and I do not want it for a longer time than it should continue, because other vegetables must in justice have their turn. Freezing is inevitable in this day and age and I have the implements, but I am lackadaisical about the whole affair, and had I my will, I would never eat a dish out of season. Turkey should appear at Thanksgiving and at Christmas, and for me the bird does not exist at other times.
    So in my earliest world I ate rice flour cakes at New Year’s but never thought of them at other times, and in the spring I ate glutinous rice wrapped in green leaves from the river reeds and steamed, and with it hard-boiled duck eggs, salted and sliced, or if I longed for sweet, then with red sugar, which I know now is full of vitamins, but which I ate then merely because it was delicious. And in the summer we ate crabs with hot wine, but not in the autumn when they were dangerous, and the only delicacy we children ate at any time of the year was the barley taffy, covered with sesame seed, which the travelling taffy vendor sold as he wandered along the narrow earthen roads of our hills and valleys. Whatever I was doing, intent at my books or playing games in the long grass outside the gate, when I heard the tinkle of his small bronze gong, struck with a minute wooden hammer, which he did while holding the gong and hammer in one hand, I gathered a few copper cash from my store and ran to beckon to him. The taffy, dusted with flour to keep it from being sticky, lay in a big round slab on the lid of one of the baskets he carried suspended on a bamboo pole across his shoulder. When we