SOUP FOR LIFE
Yang Chow!
By Arty Nelson
So many things in life never quite live up to the first time, and I'm not talking about some losing-your-virginity bullshit, either. I'm talking about that first big hit of any sensorially altering thing. Drugs, food, danger - things like that. For me, I could never even begin to talk about such moments without remembering that first bowl of hot and sour soup. My friend Jimmy took me out for it back in the mid-'80s, when I was going to school in central New York. Up until then, I was one of those super-clichéd Wonton guys ... a guy who really had no clue. A guy who thought a piano-key tie indicated danger, and that when somebody said "punk rock," they were referring to the first Go-Go's album. Up until that very moment, I still very much believed that everything that was falling apart in front of me was part of some greater plan, some bigger version of society, maybe even where I would have much to do with the rules and regulations.
All of which brings you and me back to a lunch I had not long ago at Yang Chow in Chinatown, wherein, at the behest of my running mate, I ordered what apparently is its secret weapon, the slippery shrimp. But in lieu of really finding the answer in that dish, although it wasn't half bad, what I did, in fact, find was something quite spectacular: the hot and sour soup. It was so good, I felt only the slightest inclination to add a dash of soy sauce, which is how you can often salvage even the most mediocre H&S soups, but this time I did it merely out of a desire to alter my experience within the context of what was already an extremely satisfying encounter with the aforementioned bowl of spicy, steaming goodness.
And I know there's a good chance you're sitting in your self-satisfied La-Z-Boy right now, reclined at a rakish angle and feeling pretty sure not a soup in the world could change your life all that much. But I'm here to tell you, beyond it even being part of my fairly hard-to-define job description, this is the kind of soup that could do exactly that. This soup, like really good bread, or even last week's much-celebrated cupcakes - which I wrongly attributed to Chango when, in fact, Auntie Em's Kitchen in Eagle Rock is the proper and clearly very gifted progenitor of said velvety treat - are the things that keep all this uncheckable craziness called "life" in check.
Oh, my, where to go when the raindrops are falling so hard they feel like tiny hammers pounding on the soft, oblong melon you generally refer to as your skull? What to do when the demons seem more like your friends than the guys everyone else is calling the good guys? What to say, when you know only too well that whatever you say will be held against you? When you come up against these things, no matter what anyone else says, you'll be facing them all alone. None of the conventional channels, even if you're bold enough to believe in them, offer the answers. All they tell you to do is buy things, better versions of things you already have: sweaters and cars and chairs and cell phones containing options far exceeding what any sane human would ever deem necessary. But that's how it all works now; consumption on all levels is the path of the New God.
And maybe what I'm saying is just more of the same. I'm not sure, because I can't tell if I'm still on the secret payroll or not. If everything I learned on my own highly designed wilderness journey was actually ever even mine. It's so tough to tell, because even the pyramid no longer admits what's going on. No one tells anyone anything unless they have to; the chain of command is scrambled, and the Internet offers very little in the way of the concrete poet warrior. But I do know one thing for sure: I truly enjoyed the hot and sour soup at Yang Chow. And if anything I've ever told you made sense, there's a pretty good chance you'll like it, too. Ciao, my friends.Published: 12/16/2004
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