The restaurant contains a whole world – “a dying planet”, as Ah-Jack calls it, that is struggling to modernise. He might shrink, but he never goes away.” Relationships are complex and real: difficult and tense at times, but often loving and caring. Uncle Pang, a gangster and “VIP” patron of the restaurant whose presence is felt throughout, is “like the moon. Descriptions are imaginative and evocative when Ah-Jack takes his friend’s hand, it opens acceptingly, “like a mollusc” an eel dish, “buttery and sweet”, flakes “against tongue like snow”. This is Li’s debut, yet she writes with a confidence that suggests decades of experience. “They were all friends,” Li writes, “if one defined friendship as the natural occurrence between people who, after colliding for decades, have finally eroded enough to fit together.” The restaurant’s owners, the Han brothers, manage tensions among the staff. Multiple families, each with its roots in China, come together under the restaurant’s roof. New recruits Annie and Pat are the teenage children of staff members together they skive and complain (“every day at a Chinese restaurant was bring-your-kid-to-work day,” Annie jokes). The oldest is Ah-Jack, a veteran of the restaurant who can wrap duck in his sleep but no longer carry heavy dishes from kitchen to dining room. This book is heartful, tender, necessary and wise.The tireless staff of the Beijing Duck, a Chinese restaurant in Rockville, Maryland, form the cast of this Women’s prize-longlisted intergenerational family saga. She skillfully maintains the balance of how families and loved ones can harm you more than anyone, and also can be there for you when no one else is. She ensures that her readers see the wit and humor of these characters while also acknowledging the restlessness, isolation and ache - both physical and emotional - that can emerge out of the immigrant experience, out of a restaurant that’s been established long enough to be thought of as a “staple” of a neighborhood. Li expertly crafts a deeply felt and beautifully evoked multigenerational narrative. I fall somewhere in the middle, coming from an Asian immigrant family that has never run or staffed this type of restaurant. For others, it may read as something close to coming home. They have both been married to other partners for decades, but have been each other’s closest companion - quietly, tenderly and chastely - for just as long.įor some readers, NUMBER ONE CHINESE RESTAURANT will bring to light an environment they’ve been in many times. Their young and ruthless coupling contrasts to the longstanding relationship between Nan and Ah-Jack. Annie and Pat, thrown together, become caught up in each other, and their restless attraction threatens to blossom into something chaotic that they might not be able to contain. Johnny tries to keep his younger brother’s ambitions in check while also refusing to recognize that his daughter is growing up, and who she’s becoming. When Jimmy and Johnny’s father passed away, Jimmy sought to finally free himself from their father’s restaurant and go on to open his own, without any real regard for how to recreate something well-established. She skillfully maintains the balance of how families and loved ones can harm you more than anyone, and also can be there for you when no one else is." "Li expertly crafts a deeply felt and beautifully evoked multigenerational narrative. Here, Lillian Li gives voice to a collection of individuals: the owner Jimmy and his brother, Johnny, the manager Nan, the head waitress, and her dear friend, Ah-Jack, a longtime waiter her son Pat, the 17-year-old dishwasher who was expelled from high school and the manager’s daughter, Annie, the 19-year-old hostess. The only readers who, most likely, have not been to the Beijing Duck House are the ones who have lived it. Because it is an experience in and of itself, a workplace and an environment, a place of immigrants and family and skills and aches and love. You’ve watched it close, renovate and reopen, all without giving it more than a cursory thought - or at least not a thought decentralized from your own experience and your own cravings for Americanized Chinese food. You’ve gone with your family for a special occasion, you’ve gone with a few friends when you have a craving, you’ve driven past it on the highway. You have been to the Beijing Duck House before.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |