Tiny Moons by Nina Mingya Powles

Author:Nina Mingya Powles [Powles, Nina Mingya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912915354
Publisher: The Emma Press

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The first character of 粽子, zongzi, means ‘pyramid-shaped dumpling made of glutinous rice, wrapped in bamboo or lotus leaves’. On the left-hand side of the character is the radical, the part that indicates meaning, which here is 米, mi: uncooked or unhusked rice. Put 米 together with 饭, fan, meaning ‘meal’, and you have mifan: steamed rice. On the right-hand side of the character is 宗 (zong), which indicates the sound. Zong. The end of the syllable sticks at the back of my throat. Incidentally, 宗 on its own means ‘ancestor’, or ‘lineage’.

Long before my mother and grandmother taught me how to cook, they taught me how to eat. The way my mother separates papaya seeds from the fruit’s flesh with her spoon, leaving a cluster of shiny black pearls. The way my grandmother peeled speckled quail eggs. How to wrench the heads off grilled prawns and suck the flesh from the shell, how to delicately peel off the white cheek from the head of a steamed fish, how to use your chopsticks and spoon together to pull noodles from one bowl to another, how to use your back teeth to crack the shell of a lychee. I learned by watching, then copying.

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