The other morning I entered the kitchen and detected a distinctly…Chinese aroma. The smell of soy sauce hung in the air, and I was puzzled. I am the only person in my household who uses soy sauce with any regularity so I found the situation curious. Who had been cooking? And why?
Turns out my cooking experiments have rubbed off on Mr. Fortune, my handsome Irishman. He’d cooked up a bowl of grits and poured soy sauce all over it. Just because it felt right. When he told me what he’d done I threw my head back in laughter. His improvised breakfast was exactly what an American-born Chinese, such as myself, would have done as a kid. My family never had grits in our pantry, but I definitely tried to cross-breed my Chinese and American tastes. Eating pizza alongside bok choy, putting pickles in my congee – they just seemed the right things to do. (My parents always were very good sports about it.) That Mr. Fortune, who hadn’t grown up in a Chinese family, would have thought to do the same thing I did was remarkable to me. More than a humorous moment, it was an encouraging suggestion that perhaps, no, an interracial, intercultural partnership is not as scandalous as some people might claim it to be.
