MARA KING The bean paste factory was government-owned and mind-boggling in its scale: several football fields in length, with towering adjustable greenhouse ceilings, and long vats of bean paste open to the controlled elements around them. Every day for two years, the fermenting paste in these vats is stirred – by machine augers driven slowly up and down the long rows – then smoothed over. On the roof of one building, they had an artisanal version of the large-scale fermentation happening in the greenhouses below. Ceramic pots were lined up like soldiers, and one very buff and sweaty young man systematically pushed a long wooden pestle through the thick paste, turning the bean paste from the bottoms of the pots up, exposing it to light, humidity, and oxygen. Sandor and I each took a turn pressing the pestle and turning the paste. It was definitely vigorous physical labor. I was quite impressed at the dedication it must have taken on a day-to-day basis to develop and maintain this method of preservation.

After a short flight and an hour and a half on a high-speed train, we arrived at Rongjiang train station in southeastern Guizhou. My mom’s dear friend of many years, Xiao Luo, was there to greet us with her nephew and his van. The road to Qinfen was steep and precarious. On certain sections, we witnessed giant rocks and rubble pushed to one side to allow for vehicles to pass, areas where mudslides had been bulldozed to create a path through to the paved road. Xiao Luo had been born in Qinfen but now mostly lives in Beijing, where she operates a business selling the very distinctive fabric handiwork made in this and neighboring villages by friends and family. We were to stay in her family home where her younger brother and his wife now lived. I was instructed immediately by my mom to call Xiao Luo “gu ma” which is something like “number one auntie” and we called her brother’s wife “ersao,” or “number two auntie.” It impressed upon me the familial nature of this visit – adopting the honorific terms as I had done within the confines of my own prodigious Chinese family as a child.