Death and Noodles
It's hard to imagine that life and death is happening everywhere. I'm not talking about human beings, specifically, or even living organisms for that matter. I'm just pondering about the appearance and disappearance of all things.
I was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain's show "No Reservations" where he goes to Hong Kong. (They're always somewhere in Asia) During a specific segment of the show, he visits a noodlemaker. Except this is no ordinary noodlemaker by today's standards. He is a craftsmen of the ancient world.
Noodlemakers today are operators of mechanized robots pounding away at a mixture of ingredients, eggs, water, flour. As a result, you can eat a bowl of noodles - my favorite being chicken and mushroom soup noodle with two boy choy stems lined brilliantly along the side like a giant green smile - and recognize the prior existence of each separate ingredient. But truly great handmade noodles - if you have ever been lucky enough to consume them - are an entirely different breed. Truly great handmade noodles make you believe that the noodles themselves could never have taken any other form than that which is present in the bowl before you. Pure and elemental, their composition is nothing more complex than that of a fruit or vegetable harvested seasonally from a noodle tree. Although morphologically, they might appear to retain similarities to their factory-born cousins, the true difference, as with us all, lies deep beneath the skin, burrowed into the very stuff of existence. These are not nameless noodles formed from brown shell/white shell chicken eggs, hard mineralized faucet water, or white flour pounded down to the lowest common denominator of wheat. These are noodles made by a man. A thin man of aging years, who wears faded green boxer shorts and a thin wash-worn wife-beater over his well-tanned torso.
He brandishes a thick bamboo shaft as his weapon of choice. Inserting the thick shaft into a divot in his wall that lies directly above the perpendicular surface of his kneading table, he prepares himself for the most strenuous - and some would argue, the most charmingly unique - part of the noodlemaking process. The bamboo shaft, fixed on one end into the wall, lies atop a heaping pile of noodle mixture. Now, the next part I am about to describe you will perhaps instinctively associate with an older world. It is one of those techniques that could only arise from an intertwining of need and primitive ingenuity, the cleverness of which never ceases to amaze any modern day observer. These are the skills that sustained life in a time when the most powerful machine was still built of flesh and bones. The secret to making these noodles, it appears, lies not in the order of procedure or technique of hand, but rather, the secret is contained within the very body of the noodlemaker himself. These noodles are pounded to a specific consistency by the exact weight of the man as he straddles the thick bamboo, bouncing back and forth across the table, using the leverage to spread the mixture into an even thickness. It is this incredibly visceral step of the process that renders these noodles so much more a craft piece than a product to be mindlessly consumed.
The man never spoke throughout the entire segment, probably because like so many ancient masters of their craft, he can find meaningful expression only through his actions while no length of fancy rhetoric can even come close to being comparatively honest.
From what I could tell, he seemed to live alone with his barrels of ingredients and his arsenal of thick bamboo shafts. They say he has no successor and like so many other master craftsmen of the past, will eventually give way to the products of modern industry. He will have no apprentice as he once was at a young age, eager to etch out a living any way he could, never dreaming that he'd come to give his entire life to something as fundamental to Asian cuisine as the Cantonese noodle.
His eventual death will be mourned by many, silent and unknowing.
I was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain's show "No Reservations" where he goes to Hong Kong. (They're always somewhere in Asia) During a specific segment of the show, he visits a noodlemaker. Except this is no ordinary noodlemaker by today's standards. He is a craftsmen of the ancient world.
Noodlemakers today are operators of mechanized robots pounding away at a mixture of ingredients, eggs, water, flour. As a result, you can eat a bowl of noodles - my favorite being chicken and mushroom soup noodle with two boy choy stems lined brilliantly along the side like a giant green smile - and recognize the prior existence of each separate ingredient. But truly great handmade noodles - if you have ever been lucky enough to consume them - are an entirely different breed. Truly great handmade noodles make you believe that the noodles themselves could never have taken any other form than that which is present in the bowl before you. Pure and elemental, their composition is nothing more complex than that of a fruit or vegetable harvested seasonally from a noodle tree. Although morphologically, they might appear to retain similarities to their factory-born cousins, the true difference, as with us all, lies deep beneath the skin, burrowed into the very stuff of existence. These are not nameless noodles formed from brown shell/white shell chicken eggs, hard mineralized faucet water, or white flour pounded down to the lowest common denominator of wheat. These are noodles made by a man. A thin man of aging years, who wears faded green boxer shorts and a thin wash-worn wife-beater over his well-tanned torso.
He brandishes a thick bamboo shaft as his weapon of choice. Inserting the thick shaft into a divot in his wall that lies directly above the perpendicular surface of his kneading table, he prepares himself for the most strenuous - and some would argue, the most charmingly unique - part of the noodlemaking process. The bamboo shaft, fixed on one end into the wall, lies atop a heaping pile of noodle mixture. Now, the next part I am about to describe you will perhaps instinctively associate with an older world. It is one of those techniques that could only arise from an intertwining of need and primitive ingenuity, the cleverness of which never ceases to amaze any modern day observer. These are the skills that sustained life in a time when the most powerful machine was still built of flesh and bones. The secret to making these noodles, it appears, lies not in the order of procedure or technique of hand, but rather, the secret is contained within the very body of the noodlemaker himself. These noodles are pounded to a specific consistency by the exact weight of the man as he straddles the thick bamboo, bouncing back and forth across the table, using the leverage to spread the mixture into an even thickness. It is this incredibly visceral step of the process that renders these noodles so much more a craft piece than a product to be mindlessly consumed.
The man never spoke throughout the entire segment, probably because like so many ancient masters of their craft, he can find meaningful expression only through his actions while no length of fancy rhetoric can even come close to being comparatively honest.
From what I could tell, he seemed to live alone with his barrels of ingredients and his arsenal of thick bamboo shafts. They say he has no successor and like so many other master craftsmen of the past, will eventually give way to the products of modern industry. He will have no apprentice as he once was at a young age, eager to etch out a living any way he could, never dreaming that he'd come to give his entire life to something as fundamental to Asian cuisine as the Cantonese noodle.
His eventual death will be mourned by many, silent and unknowing.
posted by Peter at 8:21 PM
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