I belong to a family of five: my mother, my father, and my two sisters. Our story is a tapestry of two cultures, woven together by the threads of survival and tradition. My parents’ journey to America was fueled by the struggles in their native lands. Poverty was a constant companion in their early lives – my mother hailing from a tiny village outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s bustling capital, and my father from a quiet village near Guangzhou, China. They both sought to escape the clutches of poverty, dreaming of a life filled with hope and opportunity.
I remember vividly my visit to China when I was 12. The old house where my father grew up was the embodiment of the stark coldness of communism, The small house contained only the essential furniture. The stove, a modest stone box, was a relic from a bygone era. Seeing it, my father’s face was an open book of emotions, revealing a mix of nostalgia and sorrow I had never witnessed before. I proceeded to ask him what was wrong and he just gave me a saddened face but put his arm around me and began to walk with me. He told me the stories of when he was younger. He said that growing up, food was very scarce and very hard to come by and the whole family needed to learn how to farm in order to cook, otherwise, there would be no food to eat.
My father had three older brothers and one younger brother, and in asian cultures, if food was scarce, food was given first to the eldest male then to the youngest and then the eldest female and then to the youngest. When he was 8 years old, a powerful storm washed away all the crops that he had. After the storm had passed, his eldest brother was given food first, pork fried rice. Pork fried rice was the easiest food to make and it used the least amount of ingredients consisting of 2 ounces ground pork, 2 cups white rice and 3 tablespoons vegetable oil and 1 teaspoon salt. When times were better he said they feasted by adding a 1/2 cup frozen peas, carrots, 2 large eggs and a small yellow onion, but those times had long passed. When my father received his tiny portion, his older brother gave his last bits to him and his younger brother. As my father and his younger brother managed to barely survive, his oldest brother got thinner and weaker. The hard life of substance farming and malnutrition took its toll and his brother died. It wasn’t until years later that my father later learned that his older brother died of starvation, he had sacrificed himself for his two younger brothers. The scarcity of food, the necessity to farm, and the struggles of a family grappling with hunger painted a picture of resilience. Elder brother’s sacrifice during a dire food shortage, giving his share of pork fried rice to my father and younger brother, was a moment of profound realization for me. It shed light on why pork fried rice was more than just a dish at our table – it was a symbol of sacrifice and love, a tradition we embraced monthly to honor my father’s brother.
The narrative of my mother’s journey began on a somber note, on January 12, 1981. Fleeing the horrors of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, she embarked on a perilous journey to America. Her tales of the Cambodian Genocide were veiled in silence during my childhood, only surfacing as I grew older. My mother would always bring me to the temple where she knew everyone, she said she knew all of them since birth, but I never questioned how she knew every single one of them being that she came here at a young age. Whenever we would go to the temple, we would pray and then eat rice porridge. I always wondered why we would eat the same thing over and over again. I asked my mother one day, why do we do the same thing over and over again when we go to the temple and not change up the order of things or eat different Cambodian dishes. My mother told me we would talk later that day and that we should not talk about it on the land of the temple. Throughout the day, I felt so much suspense, not knowing what to expect. I waited all day, but it felt as if my mother forgot to talk to me, or as if she was avoiding the conversation completely. I went into her room later that night and asked if we could continue our conversation from earlier in the day. She had a look on her face that told me that she did not want to talk about it, but my curiosity overlooked it.
She reluctantly started talking about her life as a little girl in her poor village. One day, crisis struck when Pol Pot took control and forced Cambodia into communism, killing many people. She told me stories about staying in shelters and abandoned places to hide from Pol Pot and his army. When his army took over her village, a group of friends and neighbors decided to get on a boat and escape the madness. They all boarded the ship to New York City in hopes to start a new life. The wintertime trans-pacific journey was harrowing. Giant swells and icy wind made the trip almost unbearable. They were forced to stay in the hull during the day and only allowed above deck at night.
They were responsible for their own food and supplies for the entire trip. Poor and unprepared they huddled together for warmth, shared blankets and clothes. They had to pool their meager resources in an attempt to keep everyone alive. When I asked my mother about what they ate during the trip, she said that the person on the boat allowed them to use the kitchen during the overnight hours. The main dish they made was rice porridge because it was cheap and filling. A regular serving only required 10 cups of water and a half cup of rice that you stir over the stove top. It requires very few ingredients and they were able to make it in large batches to eat over the course of the next few days as it didn’t spoil easily. In their village they would have added two chopped salted duck eggs, some pickled mustard greens and tablespoon of pickled radish in chili oil. But of course non of that was available on the ship. Every once in a while they could steal some sugar to make a sweet porridge as a temporary reprieve from the monotony of their bland staple.
Our frequent visits to the temple, a sanctuary for her and her childhood friends who had shared the harrowing journey, were punctuated by the ritual of eating rice porridge. This humble dish, a staple during their escape on a boat to New York, was a testament to their survival against the odds. It required minimal ingredients, provided sustenance, and bound them together as a community. This tradition, passed down to me, became a bridge connecting me to my mother’s past and the Cambodian community.
These stories of my parents’ pasts taught me the profound connection between food, identity, and upbringing. Food, in our family, was a historian, narrating tales of struggles, resilience, and unity. For my father, pork fried rice was a canvas of memories, both bitter and sweet. It was his homage to a lost brother and a past that shaped him. For my mother, rice porridge was a symbol of community and survival, a dish that brought together a group of refugees bound by shared experiences. These dishes became a part of my identity, linking me to my roots and shaping the bonds I shared with my family. Through them, I learned the power of food as a storyteller, a bearer of traditions, and a binder of communities across generations.
