Chicken

Repost from October 9th, 1997

There is an old Chinese saying: “Carrot or cabbage, everyone has a favorite.” Everyone has a food whose place no other food can take. Chicken, although I cannot assert it is always my favorite food, has a unique relation with me that no other food has.

Ten years ago, when my granduncle visited China from the United States, he told my mother, “If your sons want to go to America, they have to endure some hardship: they have to eat chicken legs everyday.” Mother laughed: eating chicken is a symbol of wealth in China. She said, “I’m sure he’ll like that kind of hardship.”

Granduncle was talking about “they,” my brother and me; Mother was talking about “he,” my brother Kenny. Up until seven, my comment about chicken never changed: “I hate it.” Actually, my feeling about chicken is more like fear than hatred. Whenever I thought of the dead bird’s bumpy skin, my skin became bumpy too. And I had to put it into my mouth? To get me to eat chicken, Mother compared me to Kenny, who could eat four chicken legs at age of two if no one stopped him, “See how much your brother likes the chicken. Could you eat just one little slice?”

“No.”

“Are you scared to eat chicken?”

“No. . .” It was a shame to be too chicken to eat chicken.

I said, “All right, I’ll eat that slice, but I really hate chicken, not afraid of it.” I took a slice of chicken, imagined my mouth deprived of all the nerve endings, and stuffed the chicken past my tongue right into my throat. It was the first time I had chicken. I felt disgusted. Fortunately, my mom could not afford to let me frequent the feast of horror.

After many such feasts, my aversion to chicken ebbed. But no one wants to claim he lied previously, so after seven, I never made any comment about chicken, even in times I really liked chicken. I silently taste the chicken. It might be salty, sweet, sour, or spicy; yellow, red, golden, or green; in the end, I would feel chicken’s softness, layered texture, and deliciousness rubbing against my jaws, tongue, and teeth.

Four years ago, our family moved to the United States. American chicken did not disappoint us. Their legs were everywhere and cheap. Mother said to Kenny, “I’m going to buy many many chicken legs. I’ll stuff you till you say, ‘mom, no more chicken.’” She failed. Kenny would eat four chicken legs every meal, and she had to stop him. I never admitted I like chicken, so I ate only one or two chicken legs a meal. I celebrated the feast quietly. But not until I went to college, did I understand what a real chicken feast was like. Seven days a week, two meals a day, eat-all-you-can chicken is in every cafeteria: chicken wings, chicken legs, chicken breasts, and chicken salad.

When I ate chicken wings, struggling to get rid of the bones, I felt uncivilized, so I preferred to enjoy the feast alone. In one of the few instances I had chicken wings with others, my companion, a classmate from Cambodia, told me how he thought about the chicken wings: “American kids are unbelievably lucky.” He said he came to the United States with his mother to join his sister at eleven, because all his brothers had died in the war. When he was seven, he witnessed his father being killed in the same war.

After weeks and months and semesters of chicken feasts, sometimes I want to say, “No more chicken.” Not that I hate chicken or fear chicken now, but when there is too much of something, it eventually becomes excess. I am sure I will like chicken again, if I have none of it for a week, or a month, or a semester. Imagine, I may have forty more years of chicken, if no one stops me.