Urban • Imagination • Food • Healing
After my master stole my recipe and kicked me out, I had nowhere else to turn, so I signed up to work as a chef at the Great Wall Station in Antarctica.
The station had nothing but canned food and instant noodles. More than twenty researchers had been eating convenience food for three months. I used a packet of hot pot seasoning and made them all cry. A burly Russian man teared up from the spice, while a Korean researcher said, “This soup tastes like home.” I traded hot pot for ingredients, seeds, and greenhouse vegetables from stations around the world.
Then came the polar night, three months without seeing the sun. She stood on the dark ice field, waiting for me to make hot pot, and said, “The person willing to cross the darkness to find you is your whole world.”
Later, the person who had ruined everything for me came to Antarctica too. Standing in my kitchen, he said, “What happened before was my fault. I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
I picked up my cleaver and brought it down on the chopping board. “You make your documentary, and I’ll run my hot pot restaurant. We’re even.”
Antarctica is cold. But the people here are warm.
