Tofu
by Yufeng Yang ︎︎︎(Mandarin is having moxibustion therapy in Jaantje’s clinic)
J: you are growing white hair, Mandarin, to your age, it’s rare, not happen a lot.
M: we all die, sooner or later, maybe the tofu coloured my hair
Mandarin visits Jaantje’s clinic regularly for the moxibustion therapy, to smooth the cold energy which has accumulated in her body while working in that tofu workshop for too long.
J: why you love make tofu so much?
M: people think I love making tofu, actually I just love waiting, waiting things change in my hands. Add some magic water, I wait, little work, read book to wait, and, want to tell you, grind those soy beans feel good, you just rotate the round grinder, slow, patient, then you see juice, come out.
Mandarin has been making her own homemade tofu in a tiny workshop for seven years, producing, marketing and selling are all on her own, literally one-man business. Because of the delicately soft texture and modest price, her tofu is quite well known among many east-asians in the city. Her English name is Mandarin, which refers to a type of orange. You might assume she speaks mandarin, then you may ignore the fact that she only mastered her mother tongue, a small branch of Jiangsu dialect.
J: must be the soul come out from soy beans! Feel the same thing when I cook the medicine juice, I pick them, grind carefully, boil them, and wait. I like waiting too, it takes like 2 hours so I make sure the medicine soup ok, meanwhile, I play chess game on phone, sometimes I stop and check the soup. Then relax...
Jaantje has kept buying tofu from Mandarin for two year, since she moved her traditional medicine clinic to this city. Jaantje is her dutch name and her dutch is still in the level of A1. She picked this name just because her family name is Yang. She only feels confident when speaking in Min Nan dialect that the Min Nan natives, exclusively, can comprehend.
M: you understand me make me happy. About my white hair, I think maybe I’m too lonely, and worry. I call family many times, we often talk, but they understand me not, I don’t know how... I can’t imagine if I say ‘lonely’ this word in Chinese, feel shy, so shameful.
J: what you worry?
When Jaantje came to Mandarin to buy tofu she sometimes encountered Mandarin talking on the phone in Jiangsu dialect. She loves Mandarin’s dialect although it makes no sense to her. You could see Jaantje smokes cigarettes besides those tofu, while carefully chewing each tiny bit of the vowels Mandarin made.
M: I worry my father, he have cancer, but we don’t tell him the cancer thing, we lie, and act as no cancer, but I think he know already, he pretend he normal sick, and suffer when pretend.
J: do you love you father?
M: of course, I love him much. But I don’t say love to him, it’s also shameful word, no one say this.
J: but I say this, for example... I love you! Mandarin.
M: ohh, wow, it actually feel no shame when hearing you say it. You let me want to give you lots of tofu, and no need to give me money.
As they both can’t understand each other’s dialect, it's just spontaneous for them to talk with their broken English. Once Mandarin told Jaantje she likes talking in English with her, since the world suddenly feels so easy and chill using the limited English words they know.