“Popo Is Still Urging Us To Come Back for the Mid-Autumn Festival” by Huina Zheng

Popo Is Still Urging Us to Come Back for the Mid-Autumn Festival

Popo’s persistence is unwavering. Every day, she bombards Ming with WeChat video calls, asking why he won’t come home for the Mid-Autumn Festival, what she did wrong to raise such an ungrateful and unfilial son who’s too absorbed in work to spare a glance for family, and why he never takes the initiative to call her. I tell Ming she is trying to make him feel guilty to get him to visit home more often, but deep down I wonder if all Chinese parents long for reunions with their children. Popo is calm and collected in front of me, inviting us to come back for a visit, describing the “Abalone, Sea Cucumber, Shark Fin, and Fish Maw Broth” that she slow-cooks to perfection every year, adding Jinhua ham to create a multi-layered, nourishing, and hearty soup, and how much Ming loved this soup as a child — though he tells me the sea cucumber was too gelatinous and the fish maw too chewy. My own palate rebels at such textures: can’t stand maltose, barely tolerate fried rice cakes. I try to be a mediator because I don’t want Popo to think I’m inconsiderate, but if you really know me, you’d know it’s hard for me to empathize with her, so I reply by saying that if we’re not swamped with work over the holidays, I’d love to try her specialty soup, as well as her frequently-cooked sweet and soft lotus seed soup, even though we haven’t discussed when we might be free from work. For dinner, I order Suan Cai fish from a takeaway. I feel my pants are a bit tight because I’ve been ordering high-fat, high-calorie takeaways for a long time — the oil, salt, and sauces are key to enhancing the flavor, making the food more delicious and tempting, and because I’ve been avoiding cooking, and Ming doesn’t care about not having home-cooked meals. I wonder if Popo would think I’m unsuitable to be a good wife and mother if she knew about my preference for easy takeaways over the labor of cooking, or maybe it’s my carefree attitude that charms Ming, aligning us in our dietary habits. In our WeChat group, I tell Popo I grew up eating sticky rice chicken, which my mom would buy from the nearby market all year round for breakfast because she loves its soft and delicious flavor, especially the sticky rice with the scent of lotus leaves. I invite Ming to join our conversation, though he’s reluctant, saying he’s wary of his mom’s overbearing love. You’ll be like that when you have kids, I tell him, wondering if my laissez-faire attitude means I won’t micromanage my children’s lives, or if it simply suggests I’ll be seen as an irresponsible mother, if I should steam the freshly wrapped dumplings, or opt for the convenience of frozen ones from the freezer — though this time I lean in, making a batch of homemade dumplings. Perhaps, in the end, it’s the thought and love we put into our meals that truly nourishes.

Zheng Huina

Huina Zheng holds an MA with Distinction in English Studies and works as a college essay coach. She’s also an editor at Bewildering Stories. Her stories have been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and others. Her work has received nominations twice for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She resides in Guangzhou, China, with her husband and daughter.

Headshot: Zhouqiang Guan

Photo Credit: Staff