Ying Chang Compestine attributes her burning appreciation of food to coming of age during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
“Food was rationed. We got like 10 eggs per month for a family of five and one pound of oil,” says Compestine, who lives in Lafayette. “I think about food all the time, because I feel like I was half-starved growing up. That’s how I ended up writing cookbooks and fiction centered around food.”
So when COVID hit her hometown of Wuhan, food was foremost in Compestine’s mind. She worried about family members who still reside in the city. Were they hungry? How were they getting groceries, when the whole city was on lockdown? Eventually, she came across a story about young volunteers who were cooking meals and delivering staples to people quarantined at home.
Compestine reached out to one of those volunteers – a niece of a friend, who she interviewed over WeChat – and that connection shaped the protagonist of her new middle-grade novel, “Morning Sun in Wuhan” (Clarion Books, $17) which the New York Public Library named one of 2022’s “Best Books for Kids.”
Set in early 2020, 13-year-old Mei is the daughter of a doctor working endless pandemic shifts at the hospital. Alone at home, Mei begins to cook for her neighbors at an emergency kitchen, hauling food to their high-rise apartments with ropes and baskets.
“Morning Sun” at times reads like a thriller, as the virus courses around Wuhan, with people collapsing in public and panic and fear clouding the air.
But food is embedded in its heart. Some of the masks characters wear – perhaps due to misinformation or lack of supplies – are made with cabbage leaves and citrus peels. The writing is rich in appetizing descriptions, like Mei’s class erupting “as if someone dropped water into a wok full of hot oil,” and a nurse passes through a crowd that “quickly seals back like a thin stew.” The novel’s chapters are interspersed with illustrated recipes young chefs can cook themselves, like hot dry noodles with spicy sesame sauce and eight-treasure rice pudding. (See her recipe for hot dry noodles here.)
Compestine recently took time to talk about food, the book and her beloved Wuhan. (This interview was edited for brevity.)
Q: What made you want to write about Wuhan?
A: I feel half of me still lives there. Every night — often — I dream about my life in Wuhan, even though I’ve been in this country for 30 years. My brother and childhood friends still live there. Before this whole COVID breakout, I was ready to go to Wuhan.
Q: What was it like having relatives there when the virus hit?
A: It was really heartbreaking. Every day I would watch the news. You saw the bodies piling up in the hospitals and people crowded in the hospital hallways.
At one point, my older brother said, “I really need an N95 mask, so I can go to the hospital and get some medicine.” Those masks were the hardest thing to come by. Finally one of my friends gave me an N95 mask, and I spent like $150 to send it the fastest way. It got confiscated – it never got to them. I felt really desperate.
Q: Can you tell us about these food brigades that organized during the pandemic?
A: In China in these high-rise buildings, every compound would have a small volunteer group. There was no government organization; the young people just decided they’re going to help people themselves. They risked their lives to deliver food, which was a lifeline. For people like my brother, who are older, they don’t have a mask and are locked inside. They’re really dependent on these young volunteers. That’s how they survived for months.
Q: What made you decide to have “Morning Sun” double as a cookbook?
A: I was just at a birthday party for a Chinese friend, and we had so much food. Then a while ago, I went to an American friend’s birthday party, and it was so little food. (Laughs.) For Chinese people, particularly in Wuhan, food is such a big symbolic thing in our life. It’s how we express our love and friendship to each other.
I never understand when Americans go to visit their sick friends, and they bring flowers. I’m thinking, “What does that do? You can’t eat a flower.” For my friends, I bring food – be practical.
Q: What is the food scene like in Wuhan?
A: It’s next to the Yangtze River, so we get a lot of seafood and a lot of fish from the river. Also because it’s a big industrial city in central China, there’s food going from north to the south and vice versa, so we have food from all over China gathered there.
I just think Wuhan cuisine is the best cuisine. It’s not as spicy as Hunan or Szechuan food, but it emphasizes fresh seafood and vegetables and very healthy versions of Chinese food. A lot of this you have to put caring and love into to make well. I simplify it in the book, so that young readers can make it too.
Mark your calendar: Compestine will talk about her writing at 4 p.m. on Jan. 19 at Books Inc., 3515 California St., San Francisco; booksinc.net
