In the courtyard of my wife’s family home in Linqiong there is a round chopping block, two chi across and one cun thick, mottled and dim, ordinarily used for mincing meat. I had always taken it for a tree stump. Only when I washed it today did I realize how astonishingly heavy it was. Its surface showed not annual rings but something like fish scales. Once rinsed clean, it turned the color of amber, and within it one could faintly make out dark red veins. When I asked where it had come from, my wife said that while her grandmother was still alive she often muttered that it was a dragon scale handed down through the family. No one had ever believed her.
The cooks of the Li family at Xiaoguan Temple are never permitted to trim their nails in the ordinary way. Their nails must be pared while slicing fine shreds, until each edge is rounded, smooth, and without flaw; only then may they be considered properly trained. The scrapings are gathered and used to nourish a potted plant called jing, which absorbs the grease-laden fumes of the kitchen.
On Taisheng Road there is an old shop called Mouse Hole, best known for its sweet-skinned duck. A cook who once apprenticed there in his youth said that the back kitchen really did contain a mouse hole, where several red rats were kept. Whenever cured or braised goods were prepared, a few whiskers had to be taken and cooked in by secret methods, giving the food an extraordinary savor. Later the neighborhood committee launched an anti-rat campaign and the old technique was broken. The owner of Mouse Hole then turned to franchising, and now branches of the place can be found across all Chengdu, which one can only admire.
Deep within Zijing there is a private kitchen serving roast meats, braises, and the like. Buried in the courtyard are six golden jars. No one can tell how large they are, for only openings the size of sea-bowl lids show above the earth. The wine inside is called Xulu Cui Tao, “green waves of filtered jade,” said to be a method of brewing left behind by Wei Zheng. I have tasted it only once. It was probably some variety of grape wine.
On Zhijishi Street there are hawkers who specialize in snacks such as ice jelly, liangxia, and guiling jelly. At lamplight they push handcarts through the Broad and Narrow Alleys, crying out their wares. Their wheels are studded so densely with Dashun Tongbao coins that the carts sound metallic even before they are seen. Among their drinks is a purple one called Three-Worm Lure. Slightly sour, it is sold only on the first day of each lunar month. It expels parasites and wards off illness; spilled on clothing, it keeps mosquitoes away. Older people often bought it to feed small children.
The Xichang brazier barbecue on Taiping New Street uses a roasting basin shaped like a square bronze nao bell, covered by a latticed grill. The heat is tremendous, enough to cook chunks of meat in moments, and yet no charcoal is used. Add only water, and heat rises from it as if from a sauna. What lies inside the bronze bell are in fact black worm-like creatures called weile. Once they touch water, they glow like burning coals. Very few people still know how to raise them.
Qingshiqiao Seafood Market is crowded with merchants and rich in aquatic produce. One often encounters fishermen speaking in the accents of Jiaodong and reed-cloaked water folk from Yunmeng Marsh. If you come here late at night for seafood barbecue, and if the date happens to be the seventh and you have not yet drunk too much, you may just make out swaying fishing lamps in the distance, a wharf paved in blue stone, bridges carved with shell-backed bixi and pixiu, and perhaps even the sound of waves.
On the snack street of Haijiao City, every night there appears a bent old man carrying a shoulder pole full of green fruits. His prices are absurd, and yet buyers crowd around him. The reason is this: among every hundred fruits there will be one with a silver pit, among every thousand one with a golden pit, and among every ten thousand one that can cure all illness. He sells only two hundred fruits a night, and they are gone in less than the time it takes to steep a cup of tea. No one knows his surname or where he lives. The Bencao Gangmu says that these are not really green olives at all, and that they can cure the drooling sickness of infants.
North of Shimian there was once a breed of black domestic fowl called the Shimian Iron General. From comb to claw every part of it was pitch black, without a single stray color; even its eyes were black points of lacquer. The region used to be famous for cockfighting. In recent years the Iron General has nearly vanished, only to acquire a reputation for excellent meat. There is a taro chicken restaurant in Shiyangchang that uses Shimian black chicken, and now and then one can still buy a live bird there.
On Hongwasi Street there is a Korean restaurant run by the Xiong family, best loved for six kinds of pickles made from jade yams, golden squash, scallions, cabbage, green spinach, and carrots, all adjusted to suit Sichuan tastes. Upstairs the little restaurant has an east room and a west room. From the eastern window one can see flying eaves and bracket sets in the distance, said to be the very site of the old Deyun Chan Monastery, Hongwasi, destroyed in war. From the western window one can gaze far off toward a towering snowy range, unmistakably Changbai Mountain.