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Flames of Memory, Flavors of Tradition |
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“Have you kindled the flames?” my mother called from the clattering kitchen.
“Yes, I have!” I answered, the frustration evident in my voice. Lighting the
charcoal had been no small feat. It was once again the eve of the Dragon
Boat Festival, and my mother was in the thick of preparing
dumplings—choosing, as always, to cook them over charcoal. She swore by the
slow, even heat and the aroma it brought out in the dumplings. Personally, I
preferred the convenience and tidiness of the gas stove. I looked down at my
hands, now stained and sooty, and sighed.
Fanning the flickering fire, I watched as my mother carefully lowered two
garlands of dumplings into the pot. “Keep watch and mind the hourglass,” she
instructed, knowing full well my tendency to drift into daydreams. And drift
I did, almost immediately.
My thoughts wandered back to childhood days in my hometown, where I’d often
visit Uncle Chin’s charcoal kiln. I was endlessly curious back then, always
tagging along, asking far too many questions—most of them repeated. I must
have been such a handful.
Charcoal, I had learned, came from timber burned in kilns—simple structures,
but rich in process. Uncle Chin’s kiln was an impressive sight: a
fifteen-foot-tall dome of clay, topped with a crown of attap leaves. Each
morning, the workers would head to the nearby mangrove swamp to collect
wood. They’d return, slice it to the right size, and stack it upright inside
the kiln. Once packed full, the wood was set ablaze from the top. The fire
would slowly creep downward, just like a stick of incense.
Beside the kiln, Uncle Chin would explain that the fire shouldn’t be too
intense—no raging red flames, or the wood would turn to ash. A slow,
greenish flame was the goal, one that encouraged the wood to smolder gently,
transforming it into perfect charcoal.
“Uncle Chin, how do you know when the flame is just right?” I’d ask again
and again.
“Experience, my boy,” he’d reply with a chuckle, often recalling the
scoldings he once got from his own teacher for failing to judge the flames
properly.
Suddenly, the rich scent of cooked dumplings snapped me out of my reverie.
“Oh no, the time!” I cried. “Mother, are the dumplings done?”
I rushed toward the pot, my earlier annoyance forgotten, overcome by the
anticipation of that first delicious bite. The fire, the food, the
memories—all bound together in that moment of celebration. |
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