The Inheritance of Flavor

From a failed dish in Boston to building a multicultural home: exploring what gets passed down when you're trying to honor four cultures and raise a daughter who won't lose the pieces that matter most

It’s autumn in Boston in a pre-war apartment. The windows are open. I’m sitting on an Ikea couch sobbing over a plate of 番茄炒鸡蛋. Why am I sobbing? And why this dish?

番茄炒鸡蛋, or stir-fried tomato and scrambled eggs, is a common dish. It’s one of the first things I ever learned to make. It’s cheap, delicious, and can be served with rice or noodles. This was a comfort staple when I was abroad in Japan and even today, when I’m craving a piece of home.

So the tears must be happy tears, right? Wrong. I somehow messed up one of the easiest recipes that exist in Chinese cooking. Tomato. Egg. Oil. Sugar. Soy sauce. So why doesn’t it taste the way my parents made it? Has four months and 2,700 miles severed my ties to “home”?

As I sat on this couch, chopsticks suspended over my plate of simultaneously rubbery but overdone eggs and waterlogged tomatoes, I realized my tears of frustration weren’t about cooking at all. It wasn’t about the soy sauce brand or the wrong wok. This was about something deeper: the invisible ingredients that don’t translate in recipes.

Even now, when I can’t quite get the 红烧排骨 quite right or the dumplings to seal properly, I question myself about all the flavors I have inherited. But also the ones I would have, could have, should have inquired about—the ones that I’m now terrified of potentially losing.

And it wasn’t until I became a mom, Googling “what do we eat during the mid-Autumn moon festival?,” that I truly understood what my parents were teaching me with every dish, every meal, every trip to 99 Ranch.

There are distinct details of a Chinese kitchen: the crackle of green onion and ginger sautéing in a pan, the aroma of freshly cooked rice, the bright red calendar that came free with grocery purchases, and the mismatched cooking utensils clanking against the sturdy wok.

In many Asian households, my own included, “love” isn’t expressed in lunchbox notes, goodbye hugs and kisses, or verbal 我爱你—it’s expressed through your favorite dish made for dinner that night without you asking or when you’ve moved thousands of miles away, a five pound box of snacks shipped from Las Vegas to New York because you mentioned you like them one time on the phone.

Growing up, my home was the gathering spot. My parents and all our extended “family” all worked odd hours and had days off in the middle of the week. So on the two days my dad was off—he was the chef in our household—I’d drag our dining chair to the phone mounted on the wall and call all my “aunties” and “uncles,” asking if they would be joining us in our tiny apartment for dinner. In retrospect, this was a TON of work for my dad: the grocery shopping alone to cook for at least 5 people must have been a headache. And I’m not even talking about the monetary bit.

When we moved into an actual house, my home continued to be this place: for mahjong nights that started when I went to bed and ended when I shuffled down the stairs, still half asleep to head out for school, for Lunar New Year celebrations where our dining table was pulled apart to add in the extra piece in the middle and all chairs were fair game, and for my own friends to indulge in the home cooking before heading to the pool table upstairs or one of the several video game consoles hooked up to our tv.

Now, thousands of miles away without the aunties and uncles everywhere or the space of a large home to host every Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, I finally understand what my family was doing: building community. All first generation immigrants navigating uncharted territory, coming together around food that created moments where there wasn’t fear of an unknown English word being used in a conversation, where the food tasted familiar and the music coming through the speakers brought you back to a memory before you stepped onto a plane to leave behind everything you know in pursuit of a better future. One moment where, despite whatever was happening, there was a bowl of rice, a number of dishes (just not the number 4!), and good company.

But building community was just the beginning of what I'd learn about cultural preservation. Because now, I realize that cultural preservation can look like a recipe but underneath all the complex layers of flavors, there’s so much more. Especially now that I’m not just preserving one culture—I’m trying to honor four.

My husband and I often joke that when we got married, we blended two of the oldest cultures known to mankind: cultures that invented new ways of thinking, engineered new ways to engage in warfare, and built some of the wonders of the world. Thousands of years later, these two cultures are now squished inside an apartment in The Greatest City in the World. Beneath phyllo pastry and dumpling folds, thousands of miles from our families, how do we create a collision of flavors and cultures without it being a culinary disaster?

One would think that marrying outside my culture would result in me pulling away but, actually, it did the opposite. My husband is a curious person by nature and so when I moved in and started practicing all the traditions of Chinese holidays, he had questions—good natured and well meaning. But I never questioned things, I never asked questions so I didn’t have the answers. Which meant I had to go find them:

What’s the significance of duck on the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival? Why do we have to clean before Lunar New Year? Why do we eat 汤圆 on the winter solstice?

The most perfect example: one year, I asked him to meet me in Chinatown after work because I just had to get mooncakes from a specific bakery. The line was out the door and of predominately Chinese people. As we finally made our way inside the doors, I realize the entire menu is not only just in Chinese but handwritten. Which means I can’t read it. And the aunties behind the counter speak Cantonese. Which I do not speak. I must have just wiped this next part from my memory (from embarrassment) but my husband tells me I “blue screened of death,” said “We need to go” and just walked out. He follows me out, very confused, because why did I just wait 20 minutes to then just promptly leave?

How do you explain that your brain short-circuited because it couldn't reconcile the pieces of your culture you'd either lost or never fully possessed? And how do you bring all these parts together to raise a daughter so she’s not at risk of having these pieces slip through her grasp?

Parenthood was the first time I realized that every choice, every moment, and every conversation is an opportunity to live intentionally. And because no one culture is perfect nor is one culture “the right way” to do everything, our household is lucky to be able to be selective in what we choose to pass to the next generation.

When I was growing up, my parents found a way to seamlessly blend what they considered the best parts of Chinese culture and American culture. For example, I was never grounded—they didn’t feel like it made any sense as a punishment. But they also never got physical. The only time I can remember ever being spanked was when I was around 3 and my dad felt bad about it up until I turned 16 or 17. “Punishments” looked more like discussions in my household: Can you explain your thought process? Why did you do that? Do you understand why we’re upset? And verbal agreements were worth their weight in gold.

What I just described isn’t the usual immigrant upbringing. But I had the staples of an Asian immigrant household: the giant bins of rice, weekly trips to 99 Ranch, a surround sound karaoke system, a mahjong table. Alternatively, I also had all the things you’d expect to see in an American household: Xbox and Playstation, blow up furniture, my own phone in my room. And maybe that's why I feel so drawn to bringing all the best parts of two cultures together.

At this stage in our lives, we’re not expecting our toddler to fully be able to process the enormity of these two ancient cultures and the impact of it on her life. For now, we’re focusing on small things: the meals that accompany holidays, the greetings in their languages, and the activities and decor that make the home feel just a little different. Sometimes, this looks like all of us decked out in Springbok gear to watch the Rugby World Cup or it’s quince branches spilling over our heads as we eat dinner on Lunar New Year.

I’ve since perfected 番茄炒鸡蛋. Not because I have the ingredients right every time or have the right cooking tools. But it’s because I’ve figured out how to course correct if something doesn’t taste quite right in the process. This isn’t the world’s fanciest dish but it certainly is one of the homiest and I cook it at every opportunity. My daughter also loves eggs, so this tangy, sweet, and salty dish with the sauce drizzled over some rice or noodles is quite literal perfection for her taste buds. 番茄炒鸡蛋 has become a staple every time we’re having a Chinese dinner night. And while I can’t easily make spanakopita or grill up some souvlaki, my husband and I do our best to honor any Greek holidays, like her name day or my husband’s name day or Greek Easter.

Our bookshelf tells the story of our intentions: board books about Lunar New Year alongside Greek alphabet primers, stories about hot pot next to tales of Greek gods. But of all the traditions we're weaving together, I hope she holds on to not only these special recipes, but also the layers of love, community, and intentional choice that make a house feel like home—no matter how far from the original ingredients you might be. And perhaps most importantly, the resilience, curiosity, and adaptability that created them: the ability to course-correct when something doesn't taste quite right, whether in the kitchen or in life.

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Other than food, music is a huge part of what I consider cultural inheritance. Sometimes these songs carry emotions I don't have words for in English, connecting me to a cultural heartbeat that transcends language and geography. Here’s a playlist of Asian pop music to get you familiar with some of my favorites.