September 23

The Ball of Unity

This dessert is pretty much the bane of my existence.

As a Chinese-American, I was never connected to Chinese culture but I did know that “tangyuan” was a popular dessert. The chewy glutinous rice ball filled with sweet black sesame steaming hot in a syrup bath was a cherished finale for a meal with your friends and family. The smiles of excitement when a bowl of this dessert was placed on the table were infectious, but I honestly dreaded this. Tangyuan symbolizes good wishes for family unity and sweet life and is typically served during the lantern festival but I disliked it. The pronunciation of tangyuan is vaguely similar to togetherness and family reunion, and the round shape of the dough balls apparently represents unity.    

I remember after every meal out we would be served some soup and it would be tangyuan. It was the only time that everyone would simultaneously be eating the same thing, and as the symbol implies, unity. I would force myself to take a bite and tell myself the same lie that I would start to like it but as I bit into the chewy ball, and the black paste slowly oozed out, I wouldn’t be able to stomach it. The tasty meal was ruined by the one thing that was supposed to be the tie. The dessert that was supposed to represent tight family bonds completely ruined it. It was so repulsive. I used to think it was just the black sesame paste, but as I tried one with peanut filling and had the same visceral reaction come out of me, I decided literally everything was wrong with the dessert. The temperature, the texture, the taste, everything was wrong with it. 

As an eight-year-old, I remember helping my mom in the back kitchen of my grandpa’s restaurant just mass making tangyuan to serve the customers. First, she would make the black sesame filling and we would roll them into balls and freeze them. Then we would roll them up in sticky rice dough to cook and serve to the white customers in the one Asian restaurant in Fort Wayne. The smell was nearly as bad as the taste but I wanted to help out. 

Then, as a 13-year-old, I helped my mom again in my home mass making the same amount as she did for the restaurant years prior. The smell of the black sesame permeated every corner of the house and it was horrible. We made trays and trays of tangyuan to store in the fridge. The most upsetting thing was when I wanted ice cream but had to move so many trays just to reach it. But my mom stayed up so late making these little desserts that I had to try and appreciate it. She gave them out to her friends and family, she told me to share them with my friends, and soon the large number of balls we had was halved. Tangyuan may not especially be as appealing to the buds as other desserts might be, but eating with loved ones is the selling point here. 

Tangyuan is a delicious dish to nearly everyone I’ve asked except me, but the memories I have tied to this nasty ball dish are so vivid. The more I hated something, the more it meant to me.  Even as I was highly disconnected from my background, I never questioned why tangyuan was served all the time and why it was never eaten aside from special occasions. The more I was connected to something of my Asian heritage, even if it was just a simple dessert. In my grandpa’s restaurant, it was a way to unify the customers and the culture, a way to unify my family together, and a way to unify all the staff of varying cultural backgrounds. A simple sweet and comforting dish. 

 

It’s still nasty though.

Recipe!

My mom made so much of it I don’t even know any measurements so I’m going off a recipe I found online. Mama also doesn’t believe in measurements. 

½ cup of warm water

6 tablespoons of softened butter

2 ounces of black sesame seeds

⅓ cup of sugar

1 cup of sweet rice flour

 

In a food processor, you want to add the sesame seeds and pulse them into a fine powder then add the sugar and butter. Pulse until it’s mixed. Then you want to put this mixture into the fridge so it’s easier to work with. When it’s cooked, the inside is pretty much black sesame-flavored butter maybe that’s why it was so funky to me. 

While that’s hardening, to make the chewy part on the outside, add the rice flour and water together and mix until it forms a dough. Divide it up into equal pieces. Make sure to cover the dough with a damp paper towel as it dries quickly and cracks. 

After the sesame mixture is hardened, you should be able to form it into little marble-sized balls that are easier to work with. 

Taking the dough balls, flatten them out in your palm and place one filling ball in the center of it and fold the edges over until the filling ball is completely covered. Then roll it around between your palms until it’s a uniform ball. 

Time to cook!

Boil some water over medium heat and while you drop in the made dessert, stir immediately so they don’t stick together and break and dirty up the water. After it starts boiling again add ½ cup of water. Repeat this twice. 

There are many ways to eat this. You can either serve it with the water, drain it and serve it with some sugar syrup, or eat it plain. 

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September 9

Literacy Narrative

I’ve always been a book lover but now it’s more like I love the idea of books. 

During the summer, I spent a good chunk of money buying books. A couple of these were because I thought the books were pretty like this Jane Austen book with a flowery cover, the gold lined pages, and a little ribbon bookmark. I honestly spent more time browsing than actually reading the books. 

I didn’t always think like this. I loved reading when I was little. I read before bed, I read in the car, I read at the dinner table, and I read whenever I could. I read so much my parents blamed my poor eyesight on nighttime reading and how hunched over I would be over the pages. I loved the way Geronimo Stilton was written. It was a chapter book but I read it similar to a comic book. The most devastating thing as an elementary school student was going to the scholastic fair without money. I wanted to be able to buy a book I thought I would read (I wouldn’t) countless times on my own accord.

But the earliest memory I have of fully immersing myself in a book was in second grade. I was obsessed with Harry Potter. I, along with Kathryn and another friend, would spend our recess casting spellings, creating potions out of grass, leaves, and dirt, and actually creating stuff of our own in a notebook. Thinking about it now, it must’ve been weird seeing three kids squatting around and mixing weeds and dirt, or running around and yelling “avada kedavra” at each other. But, this was the first time I truly did appreciate a piece of literature. 

Around 5th grade, I stumbled across a book called “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” by Grace Lin. It’s a fantasy-adventure story inspired by Chinese folklore and to my little 11-year-old self, it was fascinating. I was fascinated because it was written by an Asian author and I was drawn to the cover because of the red dragon and cultural patterns I would so often see. I was strangely captivated by the book despite having a disconnection from Chinese culture but I wanted to read it. I loved how there would be stories within the story I was reading and how the folklore tied into the adventure. It never clicked in my head that even if a book was in English, it wasn’t necessarily American culture. It was the first time I’ve been multiple languages in a book and it was even better to see words I’ve used or heard in my household on the pages of a book I was holding. Since then, I’ve been more drawn to books with cultural aspects as to me, it’s a way to let my imagination go all over the place. 

Now, as a 12th grader, I feel like I’ve lost the excitement of finding a new book to read. Sure the encouragement of annotating books may have ruined it a tad, but there are only so many unique plots. In my head, I filter books I see into “school books” and “for fun books”. The school books, obviously, are renowned for their literary merit while the fun books really depend on what I’m looking for. With the fun books, I’m trying to be more open-minded but with the same repeating plots, it gets exhausting. But, one day, I’ll have a whole wall of pretty books for sure. 

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