Breakfast

When I was little, in primary school, my classmates and I needed to take turns to the school kitchen to fetch our class’ breakfast. The kitchen was at the end of the playground. It was inside a very dimly lit bungalow, with simple types of furniture, and a plain earth floor. The food was simple: a bucket of rice porridge, a basket of mantou (Chinese steamed bread), accompanied by a small bowl of pickled vegetables.

Every day, two of us carried either end of a bamboo pole with a porridge- bucket dangling in the middle. The third kid took the basket. Once the breakfast was laid inside the classroom, the whole class was queuing up to fill the porridge in our bowl and to fetch a mantou, while the kid in charge added a spoonful of pickle vegetables inside. I still vividly remember the rich, dark, deep red colour of these vegetables and their crunchy sweet, sour and salty taste. They are so delightful that some of us quarrelled and cried to have more.

Sometimes, Mum bought me breakfast from nearby streets to bring to school. We had a little aluminium pot with a loose-fitting lid and two handles. I carefully, but proudly walked into the classroom to reveal my special breakfast. There were two dishes I particularly found of: one was a thick soup made with butter-fried flour paste, mixed with water and nuts. The street vendor would use a huge but shallow wooden spoon to load the soup, together with one long twisted bread stick that was so chewy and tasty. The second dish originated from the muslin region of the city. It is a kind of chunky vegetable soup, with half-beef-half-starch meatballs. I always asked to have a splash of red chilly oil that smelled rich, roasted and peppery. Before eating, you tear a triangular pancake into pieces and mix it with the soup and spicy source.

Memory is a wired thing, I can still remember the tastes but I lost all the feelings. Memory can transport you back in time, but on most occasions, you are just a puppet of yourself.

I had no such breakfast in middle school though. I usually ate quickly at home while Mum combed my hair. I walked to school mostly at the break of dawn. After a not-so-energetic but very sleepy whole-school gymnastic exercise on the playground, we read out loud in the classroom on whatever subjects need to memorize. During break time before the first lesson, we can buy a few snacks from a small convenient shop inside the school. A pack of rice crisps and freshly made warm pancakes are the most popular. The pancake is packed with shredded potatoes and bean curds. When I wrote down these words, my mouth is filled with the familiar sour, salty potato tastes with a hint of spice. I also remembered the excitement I felt when I secretly bit into it while our math teacher writing on the blackboard. He suddenly turned, however, looked amused at me who had a full cheek and an oblivion look. In my memory, he is tall, patient, and wearing square, black-edge glasses. He liked to bounce his knees when making a point.

In university, we had a much more sophisticated canteen, providing a great variety of local food. I got up early, to wash in the shared bathroom before the majority of people living on the same dormitory floor. I often bought myself a plastic bag of hot soy milk with a straw and a deep-fried dough in a disk shape. I gobbled down the dough and suck the drink as quickly as I can manage. Outside, in a corner of the campus, opposite the library, in a rock garden, the sun is shining. I read out loud my English textbook to prepare for studying abroad. Food was just the fuel for ambition. I was so young that I believed if I made enough effort, I could achieve anything and everything.

Many years forward, my breakfast has changed a lot. Breakfast is less intuitive but disciplined and calculated, driven by popular dietary trends – Low-fat plant-based, full-fat no carbohydrates, or absolutely nothing to maximize the no-feeding window. I spend even less time tasting food. I can summarize all these decades in the above few lines.

I would give anything to go back to that noisy dusty childhood street that is filled with tastes and memories. Time passed slower and days stretched out to fill in the details. There seemed no trace of worry, no worries about the future, nor worries about the calories.