Kong Mingzhu: Spinner of food stories and family tales
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KONG Mingzhu, Chinese novelist, food blogger focusing on family recipes and food stories. Born into a literary family in 1954 in Shanghai, Kong was sent to work on a farm in suburban Fengxian District during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76). She completed a degree in literature in Japan in the early 1990s and published her debut novel “Big-money Dreams in Japan” in 1995. Since 2006, Kong has been recording home recipes and writing food stories on her blog “Ms Kong’s Kitchen.” “Cooking makes my daily life more substantial,” she said.
What’s the best book you’ve read recently?
“My Childhood River” by famous poet and essayist Zhao Lihong. Published in simplified Chinese by the Fujian Children’s Publishing House last year, it is Zhao’s debut children’s novel. Using poetic language and a free-flowing rhythm of prose, it’s about the crucial years of a little boy living in the 1950s and 1960s in China.
What’s your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how)?
Whenever I fret over a lack of inspiration for my next week’s column as I sit in front of my computer, I will read whatever comes to hand — books, magazines or even newspapers. Reading helps relieve my stress and soothe me. A good read has always given me ideas to write.
What was the last book that made you laugh?
“Love For All Seasons” by US-based Taiwanese writer Jiang Xiao-yun, who turns 60 this year. It’s a collection of 14 separate yet interrelated stories of the “old” Shanghainese living overseas. Compared to the “new” Shanghainese, the “old” Shanghainese are those who lived in Shanghai before the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan in 1949. For me, the characters and the details make it a powerful comfort read.
What’s your personal book collection like?
I don’t have a big collection because my place is small. Of my 2,000 books, most are world classics, signed copies and a variety of reference books. I often get rid of books I’d never want to read again, such as books on things that have a shelf life of a banana.
Do you have a favorite childhood literary character or hero?
Yes. Pavel Korchagin, a quintessential positive hero in Nikolai Ostrovsky’s novel “How The Steel Was Tempered,” and the Russian novelist Maksim Gorky. Brimming with optimism and determination, they have taught me to always strive for excellence despite the challenges.
Do you have a favorite world classic?
I simply adored “Yevgeny Onegin,” Pushkin’s novel in verse, when I read it in secret as a young teenager. It is a beautiful and enlightening book on first love and friendship. Even today at the age of 60, I’ve never given up the desire to understand the complex emotional consequences of affairs between men and women.
If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be?
Chekhov, American Raymond Carver and Lu Xun. I regard them as the greatest writers of short stories and I want to ask them how to write a good short story.
What’s the highlight of the year?
At my age, I began to recall more stories about my father and things he had told me. “An Old Account” about my father borrowing money from his friend during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76) won the No. 10 Shanghai Literary Prize for Essays. I want to write on the lives of my father and valued friends.
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