The alarm clock went off in pitch darkness. I hit the snooze button with my eyes closed. This repeated until my father’s obligatory call.
“Awake yet? If you don’t feel like going, then forget it—go back to sleep.”
There was no reproach in his voice. After all, I was already here for the so-called homecoming. What more could he expect from me?
“I’m going. Five minutes.”
Eight minutes later, bleary-eyed, I waited as my father backed the car up. Behind me was our country house, rebuilt years ago in the “European architectural style,” fashionable in the southern Zhejiang province countryside.
In the courtyard, pale jade luffas and chubby butternut squashes—long as my forearm—hung heavy in the bluish light of dawn. Across the road, the mist thinned into a veil above the water caltrop fields. Not yet thick in the midday heat, when the air felt like cheese curdling around your body. Women in conical bamboo hats were already in the waist-deep water, harvesting.
I climbed into the car, and we headed toward the market in town.
My father steered with practised ease, swerving around electric tricycles as the only car on the narrow road. He asked what I wanted for breakfast and dinner—skipping lunch, since the caretaker who helped the family had probably already planned that.
“Shall we get a few 'Maibing'[1] to bring home? With preserved mustard greens and egg as filling? Or maybe let’s have 'San-Xian' noodles?[2] Oh no! It’s too early—there’s probably nothing open. Let’s just grab some pork buns at the market. Your grandpa says they’re good.”
“Anything,” I replied. The jolting ride on an empty stomach had ruined my appetite already.
“Or we just eat at home. There’s still some rice cakes left from last night.”
My mother had once remarked that he’d changed a lot, perhaps due to his aging.
I wasn’t exactly excited about food shopping. I’m never a big fan of the food here. I can hardly distinguish cockles from clams nor can I tell whether one vendor’s yellow croakers are fresher than another’s. Yet on the fifteenth day of the lunar month, it was market day, which is a big thing for the whole town. Having not grown up in this part of China, I’m considered a “visitor”, so skipping one of the month’s most important events would make others see my life as intolerably dull. My father must have foreseen it as he’d even reminded me to charge my camera the night before.
He has always loved food shopping. Not that he manages any other domestic tasks, or plays the role of a dutiful family member who brings fresh vegetables home every afternoon. I have plenty of reasons to believe that his greatest relish comes not from the daily maintenance of a family; but from the act of shopping itself. Specifically, for food, be it the weekly Carrefour trips of my childhood or today’s online groceries delivered at our door. My mother recently complained a lot about his impulse buys. Odd, useless ingredients discovered through TikTok or e-commerce feeds. Or our fridge, which, however many times it gets replaced, has never been large enough.
Here in the village, though, there’s no such shopping for my father. At most, a farmer might pass by with a shoulder pole. More often, the caretaker disappears for a few minutes and returns, as if by magic, with corn or eggplants fresh from the fields. To an outsider like me, this network of exchanges is like the clandestine networks in a spy film. Perhaps to my father as well. He has no wish to weave himself into the intricate fabric of a rural neighborhood, and such trades can never satisfy the scale of food shopping he expects.
Thus, the market becomes one of his few diversions here. Every time it comes around, he readies an indigo folding cart in advance, sits on the rosewood sofa downstairs with a lit cigarette, and waits to see if anyone will join his expedition. As to whether he is really skilled in selecting ingredients from the market? That is another matter.
One fair last year, he had hardly begun the journey before encountering a ten-year-old girl with a red scarf selling mud crabs in a bucket. He had asked why she’d shouldered this task at such a young age, and she’d told him that her father caught these crabs at the shore before dawn that morning. My father shook his head, “The crabs are too skinny.” But he bought them anyway. At lunch, both the crabs—and my father—became the subject of the complaint from the whole family.
The car crossed the Qingjiang River and turned right into the parking lot. The river separated one village from another. A row of squat buildings separated the river from the market. A single road separated me from the market.
“Look. The cars are almost gone. Everyone’s already finished shopping. We’re too late.”
I knew the fault was mine, and guilt silenced me as I trailed his indigo cart. I didn’t know which pleased him more: to arrive on time, or to arrive with me.
I checked the time: 6:27 am.
Crossing the road, I stood at the crest of the slope descending into the market. It was like prying open a long-sealed jar of 'yusheng'[3] to a sudden rush of noise and smell. The bustling crowd, colourful plastic tarpaulins, and clattering of tuk-tuks over uneven pavement all fused with the tang of seawater and damp air, engulfing me without warning.
Below, the narrow spaces between storefronts teemed with vendors selling corn, caltrops, greens, tiny shrimp, crabs. Tanned, wiry and short, they squatted on low stools or leant against walls. Their shoulder poles, baskets, and buckets jutted into the street like two endless worlds striving to ingratiate, welcoming my father.
In Chinese, we say that “the customer is God,” at least before the purchase. Hierarchies exist between customer and vendor. For my father, who once dominated our domestic space with his masculinity, this is a space to reclaim his control. Though softened by age, at the market he can still call the shots. For here, every visitor is a sovereign of this world.
And my father was that sovereign, striding downhill with his indigo steed.
This article is a contribution from one of the participants of The Gramounce Food & Art Alternative MA 2025-27. Their writing is inspired by one of our seminars, or responds to a similar field of interest within food & art.
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[1] 'Maibing' (麦饼 in Chinese): A distinctive wheat cake from Zhejiang Province, especially southern Zhejiang. Roughly the size of a handheld fan, it is filled with savory stuffing and pan-grilled until cooked through. In my hometown, the fillings often include dried shrimp, egg, diced fatty pork, and preserved mustard greens.
[2] 'Sanxian' Noodles (三鲜面 in Chinese): A specialty noodle dish from Qingjiang Town, Yueqing, featuring a mix of dried seafood such as dried eel and mudskipper, together with fresh clams and yellow croaker. Its hallmark is a delicate, layered umami flavor.
[3] 'Yusheng' (鱼生 in Chinese): Here specifically refers to 'Wenzhou Yusheng', a traditional fermented fish dish from Dongtou area near my hometown, with over 1700 years’ history. It is traditionally prepared with tender young cutlassfish. After initial salting, the fish is marinated with shredded radish, rice wine lees, and red yeast rice, then sealed in jars and stored for over two months before ready to eat.