Inherited from my immigrant parents, rice has always lurked in the background of my life, providing fodder for small daily rebellion against my parents’ careful control. Although Americanized in many ways, in other aspects, such as their rabid thirst for educational achievement and their culinary habits, they remained very Chinese. As a teenager whose friends ate Wonder bread, pasta, and Uncle Ben's, the rice was just one in a long line of idiosyncrasies that marked my parents' difference.
My brothers and I were required to have a minimum number of daily fruit and vegetable servings. The best method I devised for avoiding greens was hiding them underneath my rice. Of course, I was supposed to eat the rice too, but as the meal wore on and my mother's patience grew thin she was willing to compromise — not on the veggies, but on the rice. Infinitely stubborn, I always won this game of attrition. Eventually she got up to wash the dishes or pull out the educational workbooks and I seized that moment to bury my veggies beneath the leftover rice.
Years passed, my teenage self-consciousness waned, and rice took on new meaning. In the process of dating and marrying a Korean man rice became not an instrument of rebellion but a symbol of compromise and adaptation.
I was surprised at K’s strong opinions about the many varieties of rice. Most Koreans don't like the long grained rice that the Chinese eat, preferring the shorter, stickier rice that is eaten in Korea and Japan. Koreans also add to their rice — beans, peas, sweet rice, barley and other grains-- in order to increase the rice’s nutritional content. Particular combinations of these ingredients are eaten at certain times (for instance, at the first full moon of the lunar year). The texture and smell of the rice is very important; any restaurant that doesn't serve good rice will not do well in Korea.
And then there are the elaborate principles governing how one politely and appropriately cooks and eats rice, generating debates about the best method of cooking (rice cooker or pressure cooker) and the perfect amount of water needed to achieve the desired stickiness. When the rice is done, we let it sit for 5 minutes, then stir it up to separate it from the walls of the pot. Chinese people eat rice with chopsticks, lifting up the bowl and “shoveling it into the mouth” (as my mom says). Koreans, in contrast, eat rice with a spoon and leave the bowl on the table. It is considered rude to lift the bowl or to leave stray grains of rice behind when you are through. Chopsticks should never be stuck upright into the rice, as that is only done for the dead.
I learned all this by trial and error as K and I negotiated our cultural differences. I took to eating the short grained Japanese rice that he preferred because it was so important to him. But it was only after moving to Korea that I began to understand that rice here is not simply about brand and preparation and consumption; in Korea rice symbolizes home and the love of family.
In my family the men do the cooking. So it was a shock, upon moving to Seoul, to be relegated to the kitchen with my identity as a wife and mother suddenly tied to food. Luckily, my in-laws are wonderfully but hypocritically liberal — they lecture me on my role, but they let me get away with only the gesture of food preparation. At my in-law's house I hover around my mother-in-law as she prepares the food, carry the finished dishes to the table, and diligently do the dishes afterward. I am more ornament than sous-chef.
As I go through the motions of cooking and cleaning my mother-in-law offers running commentaries on rice in an effort to transfuse me with lessons on the role of wife and mother in Korea. She tells me that when we throw away rice, “God gets angry.” Although perhaps the cheapest part of the meal (especially considering the cost of meat and produce here), rice somehow represents the preciousness of food and of life itself.
Rice also represents the emotional relationships between family members. When serving rice you're always supposed to serve at least two scoops or you have no “jeong” (affection, emotion, love). The serving of a generous amount of rice represents the giving of emotion and affection — not to be regulated or restrained, but given in abundance, without thought of waste or rationing. Mothers and wives are expected to cook fresh rice for each meal to serve to their husbands and children and should eat the leftover rice themselves, presenting with each meal renewed evidence of their care and concern.
While many people back in the U.S. reminisce about the smells of bread and cookies in their childhood homes, here people grow nostalgic for the smell of cooking rice in the morning. In both worlds these are the smells of comfort, home, love, safety and warmth. There are so many ways to lose oneself, especially in a different country. But it is the little things, the daily routines, foods, and textures, that express and cement relationships, make us feel at home and allow us to adapt.
My kids have now inherited rice as well; more than hamburgers, more than pizza or apples, they love rice. At their first birthdays, when Korean tradition has them pick something from a table of objects, they both picked rice. How rice will run through their lives and what significance they will attach to it I don't know. But for my in-laws, surrounded by a a rapidly changing Korea and left almost without family members since the Korean War, seeing their only grandchildren wolf down a bowl of rice brings them some measure of satisfaction and reassurance. Despite their Chinese-American mother and globe-hopping lifestyle, these boys will retain a connection to their father's country and culture and past. We may move across the world, put down new roots surrounded by confusion and misunderstanding, but some things will go on, some things will last, some things will call us home.
Happy holidays everyone!
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