Dumpling soup

Today at my internship we made a dumpling soup. Except it was nothing like the kind my mom makes, where things are impeccably and delicately seasoned with the ubiquitous ginger, garlic, green onion and sesame found in chinese cooking. No, the recipe we used was an odd matching of east meets west -- the soup contained the loud pronounced flavors of things you'd find in western stews mixed in with the dark sassiness of chinese soysauce (I couldn't help but notice how much it tasted and smelled like Thanksgiving stuffing!). The dumpling filling was more like a stirfry, a cacophonous poem of chopped up leafy greens and carrots completely uncharacteristic of a true, chinese dumpling. It was... good, but definitely different.

Me with my metaphorical thinking couldn't help but draw the link between this soup and my identity. A chinese-american girl whose insides are familiar to the recipe of her heritage, but also have the influence of the western ingredients from the "stuffing-esque" soup I reside in. I'm reminiscent, but just not exactly what I'm "supposed" to be. Neither chinese or american, my generation is that of its own -- one where our spoken linguistics are predominately fluent in english but still a little funny, and one where we understand the choppy "chinglish" more than the quick-tongued rapidfire mandarin you hear on the chinese news.

It's nothing to be ashamed of. Sure, that culture doesn't follow the recipe of old and it's not always easy to fit in (native asians are too asian, whites can be too white), but I think something special lies in such harmony of flavors, perse. Even though language and mannerisms may be diluted throughout the generations once in another country, I think one thing is for sure -- food stays the same. My 4th generation chinese roommate is a testimony to that. She knows donggua soup and stir-fried mi-fen (stirfried ricenoodles) as normal family foodfare. Now, I may not make that dumpling soup everrr again, but I will definitely pass on what cooking wisdom my mom's given to me to my friends or nieces or potential adopted children (ha). And THAT, is a delicious fact.