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peanut oil and dropped three handfuls of noodles into the pan, which I shaped and flattened to the thickness of smallish pancakes. When the bottoms began to brown over a low flame, I turned them over and browned the other side, and set the crunchy noodles on three luncheon plates. To the same pan I added more oil and warmed some garlic, to which I added the bell pepper in small dice, some green onion split in one-inch segments, two shiitake-mushroom caps, sliced, and a large table-spoonful of fermented black beans chopped fine. I added a tablespoon of soy sauce and another of oyster sauce to the mixture and stir-fried for a minute or two. Then I added a cup of chicken broth from a carton and finished my stir-fry with a teaspoon of potato starch dissolved in a little water, cooking until the sauce thickened just a bit. Had it thickened too much, I would have added a little more broth. In a separate pan I warmed two tablespoons or so of oil, and when the oil was hot but not smoking, placed the bass fillets skin side down, side by side, and reduced the flame by half. Then I weighted the fillets with a heavy pot half filled with water, so that they would color evenly and not curl. After a few minutes, I removed the pot and turned the fillets over to cook for another minute, until the flesh was just cooked through. I placed the fillets skin side up atop the noodles, and poured the black-bean mixture over, adding a garnish of cilantro leaves with stems. Meanwhile, I washed the pound of snow-pea leaves (tau mee-yu), sometimes called pea shoots, in cold water, trimmed the stems, and heated a scant tablespoon of oil—you don’t want the leaves to be too oily—in a wok in which I had lightly browned a garlic clove in the oil. Then I added the wet leaves. After a brief sizzle as the water hit the hot oil, I turned the leaves with tongs until they softened and the water evaporated. I served these with a dash of soy sauce alongside the bass.

Years ago, when I lived uptown, where the neighborhood Chinese restaurants were terrible, I taught myself to cook Chinese from a book. The batterie de cuisine was not complicated: a well-seasoned steel wok, a shovel-like Chinese scoop and ladle, some chopsticks, a sharp cleaver, wire strainers of various sizes with bamboo handles, a stockpot, and a few basic condiments, all of which were easily found in Chinatown at the time but now are routinely stocked as well in the Asian section of most supermarkets: soy, oyster, dark-sesame, and hoisin sauces; black beans in jars; five-spice powder; dried shiitake mushrooms; tins of water chestnut and bamboo shoots; peanut oil; fresh ginger root; star anise; and, of course, cornstarch, chicken stock, and inexpensive dry sherry. Today the variety of sauces, aromatic dried fish, pickled vegetables, fresh water chestnuts, bitter melon, bamboo shoots, and lotus root, spices, condiments, and so on stocked in Chinese food stores can be bewildering, but the basics will support a substantial repertory of simple Chinese dishes.

The book from which I learned the basics of Chinese cooking was called How to Cook and Eat in Chinese, by Buwei Yang Chao. It had been published in 1945 and was out of print, but I had found an old copy and eventually republished it in a paperback edition, which sold well but is now also out of print, lost in the avalanche of Asian cookbooks that have been published since. As far as I have been able to discover, Mrs. Chao’s book is the first successful attempt to publish in English authentic rather than Westernized Chinese techniques and recipes. It includes more than two hundred recipes, with an informative introduction to Chinese culinary culture that covers ingredients, techniques, politesse, terms, and tools. Mrs. Chao’s recipes are accurate and easily mastered, and her commentary remains fresh and useful. With her help I created my own polyglot improvisations long before fusion became the fashion.

The author explains that the word for chopsticks—“k’uai-tzu”—means “something fast,” as when a rude tourist orders the waiter to move “chop-chop