Buddha Jumps Over the Wall…

…and lands in Ying Chang Compestine’s new graphic cookbook

Book review by Anna Mindess

 

Ignored by Doggy Buns, Heartbreak Jelly Noodles, Ants Climbing a Tree…

Did you ever wonder where these colorful names for traditional Chinese dishes come from? Author Ying Chang Compestine can tell you!

In her new graphic cookbook, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, and Other Curiously Named Classic Chinese Dishes, the 62-year-old Lafayette resident shares the stories behind these beloved dishes and pairs them with 25 illustrated recipes for appetizers, main courses, and desserts plus notes on ingredients and the etiquette of drinking tea, eating from a rice bowl, and using chopsticks. Illustrations by Vivian Truong bring the recipes and folktales behind each creatively named dish to life.

Incredibly, this is Compestine’s 27^th book. Besides several cookbooks that focus on heathy Asian cooking and memoirs of growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution, Compestine has authored a slew of award-winning children’s books that tell the stories behind the invention of chopsticks, noodles, and kite flying. She’s also reimagined Western stories set in China, like the Emperor’s New Clothes, in a Chinese cultural context.

Compestine didn’t anticipate becoming a writer. It began as a game with her childhood friends. Growing up under China’s Cultural Revolution, the children learned that many non-Chinese folktales and stories were banned as “bourgeois,” but sometimes Compestine’s group would manage to find books with these stories, only to discover that the beginnings or endings were missing.

“When I got a book with a missing part, I started to think I could write my own ending,” she says. “My friends also wrote the missing parts. Then we would start arguing whose writing is more believable. I always had a passion for that. When I finally read the whole versions of these folktales, it reminded me of my childhood, and then I thought if I rewrite these, I want to make them interesting by adding the Chinese elements.”

Compestine remembers reading the story of Rapunzel in a book that was missing the ending. She wondered what would convince the girl to come down from the tower. “At the time, food was rationed,” she says, “and I was hungry all the time. So, I thought whoever would try to entice me to come down has to be a prince with some delicious food. That’s what inspired me to write Ra Pu Zel and the Stinky Tofu, which is a dish from my hometown, Wuhan.”

Compestine is thrilled that her first graphic cookbook, which comes out in March, combines all her previous interests. “Food is my biggest passion,” she says. “When I eat at a restaurant with friends, they often ask me, ‘Why do they call it Mapo Tofu? Husband and Wife Lung?’ So, I thought I’ll write a book, and they can read the story, instead of me just retelling these stories. I knew the artist, Vivian Truong. I love her humor, and I wanted this to be a fun book.”

Compestine says that many of the dishes in the book bring up strong memories when she cooks them. “I feel like my grandmother is with me. It takes me back to China. This is how I make a connection with my early life and how I raised my son. It’s like a circle that brings everything together.”

With a graduate degree in sociology, Compestine taught in universities in China and the United States. After losing both parents to cancer in a year’s time, she missed her connection with China and started writing to overcome her grief. When she wrote Revolution is Not a Dinner Party, about growing up during the Cultural Revolution, it was challenging to re-immerse herself in that period, so she started writing a cookbook and then picture books. “When I get too sad, then I go to write my funny stories,” she says. At any given time, she is usually working on two or three books.

Compestine emphasizes that Buddha Jumps Over the Wall is not a kids’ cookbook, even though it might look like one. She says it’s because the recipes involve hot woks and large knives. “It’s meant for families,” she says. “When I’ve gone to schools, most of my books have a recipe in the back. A lot of kids love cooking, and I do cooking demonstrations and teach them about healthy eating. This would be a fun book for families to cook together. Parents can cook with their kids and tell them the Chinese story. They can laugh together.”

The title recipe, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, depicts the trials of a young Buddhist monk named Da, who is always hungry and daydreams about chicken drumsticks, crispy shrimp, and beef noodles. But because the monks are vegetarians, he feels guilty. He promises himself that he will shun these animal foodstuffs, but one day a delicious odor wafts through his window. It is so alluring that Da is compelled to follow the smell. He eventually jumps over a wall and asks the old man who is cooking if he can share the dish. The accompanying recipe includes mushrooms, baby corn, water chestnuts, and tofu in a savory sauce, but Compestine counsels that another protein can be substituted.

 

 

The Tea Eggs section begins with the story of how tea was discovered in 2732 BC, when mythological Emperor Shennong was sitting under a tree, and a leaf fell into his cup of hot water. The recipe for marbled eggs that follows is very special to the author. “Every time I make the tea eggs, I feel like my grandma is with me in the kitchen,” she says. During Compestine’s childhood, eggs were rationed, and each family only received one pound of eggs per month. But for her birthday, Compestine’s grandmother would make tea eggs. “When my grandmother made the tea eggs, they were so flavorful,” says Compestine. “Soy sauce and tea were rationed, too. When you put all those ingredients together, they make delicious tea eggs. I never had a birthday cake growing up until I was in my 20s. Tea eggs is what my grandmother made for my birthday. Two eggs all to myself. I ate them slowly, smelling them, and it made me happy for days before just to think about it.” ♦

Read more about Ying Chang Compestine and her books at yingc.com.

 

Anna Mindess is an award-winning journalist who writes on food, culture, and travel for numerous publications including the Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Berkeleyside. Follow her on Instagram @annamindess and find her stories at annamindess.contently.com.