The Republic of Wine

All this she said with appropriate gravity and at least a hint of braggadocio. Swallows’ nests may be wonderful, and all that, but, honestly, it doesn’t taste very good, and I’d much prefer something as satisfying as braised pork.
    Unstintingly, my mother-in-law continued my education on swallows’ nests. After dealing with their nutritional value she moved on to preparation, which didn’t interest me much. What did interest me was the story she told of gathering swallows’ nests, the story of her family, her story.
    My mother-in-law was born into a family with a long history of gathering swallows’ nests. When she was still in her mother’s womb, she heard the painful chirpings of the swallows and absorbed the nutrients of their nests. Her mother was a gluttonous woman whose appetite grew even more rapacious when she was pregnant. She often ate swallows’ nests behind her husband’s back and was never discovered, because she was so skilled at stealing food. My mother-in-law said her mother was born with a set of teeth that were harder than steel, teeth that could chew through tough dry swallows’ nests. She never stole a whole nest - her husband always kept count - but would skillfully gnaw off an inch or so from the bottom of each nest where it had been scarred by knives during removal, leaving undetectable marks. My mother-in-law said her mother ate nothing but the best ‘official nests,’ for those that hadn’t gone through the refinement process were the most nutritious. My mother-in-law said that all prized food items lose a significant amount of their nutritional content in the cooking process. Progress, she said, always comes at a cost. Humans invented cooking to please their taste buds, and sacrificed their fierce, brave nature. The reason Eskimos who live near the North Pole have such strong bodies and the ability to endure extreme cold is unquestionably tied to the fact that they eat raw seal meat. If one day they master the complicated and delicate culinary techniques of the Chinese, they will no longer be able to live there. My mother-in-law’s mother ate a great amount of raw swallows’ nests, so my mother-in-law was a healthy newborn with dark black hair and pink skin, a voice far louder than any baby boy, and four teeth in her mouth. Her father, being a superstitious man who believed that a newborn baby with teeth will bring bad luck to the family, dumped my mother-in-law outside in the weeds. It was the middle of winter. Although it’s never terribly cold in Guangdong, the December nights can still be bone chilling. My mother-in-law slept through the night there in the weedy cold, and survived, which changed her father’s mind; he carried her back into the house.
    According to my mother-in-law, her mother was very pretty; according to my mother-in-law, her father was born with bushy downward-slanting eyebrows, deep-set eyes, a flat nose, thin lips, and a goatee on his pointy chin. My mother-in-law’s father was older than his years and skin and bones due to long hours of climbing steep hills and squeezing between cliffs, while her mother sneaked nutritious swallows’ nests daily, which gave her a rosy complexion and fair skin from which water could be squeezed, like lilies in June. When my mother-in-law was a year old, her mother ran off to Hong Kong with a swallows’-nests merchant, so my mother-in-law was raised by her father. She said that after her mother ran off, her father cooked a swallow’s nest for her every day; it’s safe to say that she grew up on swallows’ nests. My mother-in-law said she didn’t have a single bite of swallow’s nest when she was pregnant with my wife, because that was in the early sixties, when life was so difficult. Which is why my wife looks like a black monkey. My wife would improve if she ate swallows’ nests, but she refuses. Still I knew it would have been difficult even if she’d wanted some, because my mother-in-law had only been director of the Gourmet Section of the Culinary Academy for a short while, and it would have been virtually impossible to acquire any swallow’s nest prior to assuming the directorship. The inferior swallow’s nest she made for me had not come through normal channels, which showed that she was quite fond of me, fonder than my wife was. I married my wife in part because her father was a teacher who had been good to me, and one of the major factors keeping me from divorcing my wife has been my affection