I remember my Nai Nai’s veiny hands kneading the dough,
Yi, Er, San.
Breath heavy and battered. The pork and chives filling sitting limply in the metal basin as she cupped the paste and moulded the dumpling skin into fine creases.
I wondered how her fingers worked so nimbly. Folding precisely four times and over, as I helped her craft dumplings on a Sunday afternoon.
“Lai Shang, you are a messenger sending a paper boat over the lake, your dreams are in this pocket, you can only fold it four times and pinch it. And you let it go.”
In between breaths of broken English and Zhejiang dialect, she flashed a weak smile.
I remember the juicy tenderness of the fine skin as my teeth sunk in to the steaming bowl of eight delightful pockets of gold.
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Nai Nai loved to tell these subliminal, airy folktales. A swan one week, a paper boat the next. She would knit me a qipao, of gold silk threads. Her fingertips bleeding into the red cloth after the long hours, poking holes into the coarse fabric.
She shared her love for classical music. Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. I refused to play the piano, no matter how much she coaxed me with lychee candy and red bean pastries.
“Lai Shang, we make dumplings on Sunday, the pockets of gold that you like.”
She reassured me when I was frustrated with the events of the day. My speech was still laced with shame and timidity. I couldn’t tie my shoelaces yet, but I dreamt of running away most days.
I couldn’t reconcile the two halves of me. I would leave this behind to be me. The 'me' I should be. After all, I wasn't either.
The dumplings that my Nai Nai had so preciously crafted and packed into a tin lunch box remained snuggled underneath my textbooks in my knapsack. I could not bring myself to eat dumplings here. Not in the courtyard, where sharp tongues were knives, where I could let their words cut into the pockets of gold.
I was proud to laugh along, to eat vegemite toasties though I despised the lingering aftertaste of salt that left your tongue parched. I neatly packed myself away into a tin box, sent away on a paper boat far from this place.
It was another Sunday afternoon, when I vowed to never fold dumplings again. I needed to take a walk. The house of her dim-lit bungalow, the shadows that danced upon the cream coloured walls, the jasmine incense that lingered in the corridor. The memories of a lost childhood, of a desperate sadness and omnipresent loneliness.
“Lai Shang, it's raining.” Her hands trembled on the marble tabletop. Her framed glasses hanging around her neck by a makeshift cord. These fine moments of silence that conveyed more than words could tell.
“Nai Nai, I don’t think I can hear you. I’ve heard too many (fables).”
“Lai Shang, you are growing, you need to be who you truly are.”
Nai Nai continued to chop the chives soundlessly. The red pepper flakes stinging her eyes. I soundlessly walked out of the house, far from the tales of the Tao dynasty, of ancient knights and fables.
It took years to find myself. I tried it all, the bars, the games and the thick haze that was life. I could never escape the memory of my grandma kneading the dough. Fingers pressing the skin neatly and precisely. Lined up, in a row.
I revisited this memory often. The red qipao I wore on Chinese New Year, the night I woke up to my dad crying in the toilet suppressing his tears at the news. The same red qipao as I stood in, in the pew of the church, with my Nai Nai’s favourite song playing: Swan Lake.
That night was the first time I cried for months, my head buried in my hands. Stifled in sorrow for the past that was now inconceivable. The pockets of gold, the pork and chive filling, four folds and pinched together.
My Nai Nai tried every Sunday to show me the possibilities.
The pockets of gold, the paper boats, the swan dancing on the Parisian lake. Her fables were her guise yet her promise. She would make me see that too. I fold my own dumplings and I still fold them four times over and pinch them together. They are pockets of gold I choose to treasure.
This story was originally entered in the 2020 and forms part of a special SBS Voices and SBS Food collaboration series: 'Food of My Childhood'.
