It's the eve of Children's Day. My parents have come home from their Journey To The West, bearing their buys from Chinese Turkestan: mutton buns, pomegranates and wind-dried raisins for their greedy grown-up children; and child-size sheepskin clothing for other people's children, like the lovable little terror next door.
My father, the man who gave me my obsessive gene, asks: "Did you cook your brown rice?"
Me: "Yes."
Pa: "Every day?"
Me: "Yes. Day one, I burnt the rice. Day two, I burnt the rice. But you learn after two nights spent scrubbing pots."
Pa: "Aiiiyaaa."
(The Cantonese aiiiyaaa is not to be confused with the Singlish aiya. Aiya implies impatience. Usage: Aiya, I don't have time for your rubbish. But aiiiyaaa, said in a dramatic drawl, connotes concern and is as close as some Cantonese men will ever come to saying, "Poor baby.")
"What did you eat your rice with?"
Me: "Mad cow."
(Translation: The Laughing Cow.)
Pa: "You ate your rice with cheese?"
Me: "Gwai lo fu yu yer ma."
(Translation: It's white men's fermented beancurd what.)
My father falls silent. Maybe it is because he is married to the woman who went to the Silk Road with a jar of fu yu in her handbag so she could eat her rice with fermented beancurd every day.
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