Green Confetti, Golden Hearts
My mother never officially banned cilantro. She just ignored it.
She’s from Wuxi, a southern river town in China, where flavors flow as gently as the canals. Cooking there is a subtle art—a pinch of salt to season, a drop of light soy sauce to tint, and a few rock sugars to enhance. Our dishes were clean, balanced, and predictable. Cilantro, with its bold, unapologetic fragrance, was simply absent from our dinner table. I didn’t know to miss it.
My father did all the food shopping. It was the 1980s, when every household in China still lived under the state's rationing system. We needed tickets for almost everything: rice, cooking oil, cloth, and even household items like soap. Every morning my father walked about 20 minutes to the nearest state-run market to buy groceries. It was there he would sometimes use our monthly meat tickets and brought home a slice of pork. But just outside the state-run market, the small-vendor economy was thriving—peddlers lined up the street hawking everything from live poultry to steamed buns.
Then one day, my father came home holding a thin, white plastic bag, twisted tightly at the top. Inside, the contents glistened with red chili oil and dark soy sauce. It was his surrender to the street vendor he passed every day: 口水鸡 koushui ji, “mouth-watering chicken”. He carefully transferred the contents into a bowl. The sharp scent rose instantly—unmistakably different from my mother's pot. The cool, slick chicken, the crunch of peanuts, and then—that bright, sharp and peppery explosion, a green crispness that cut through the numbing spice and made the entire dish sing!
My mother watched with a smile, as my father and I dug in, gasping now and then because of the spice. She was amused, but completely unfazed. She said she didn’t want any—glad to let the moment be ours alone.
I, on the other hand, found my new appetite. Soon I started tagging along my father’s shopping trips, and we visited the vendor one day. It was a sight I had never seen before—rows upon rows of mismatched containers holding powders, pastes, sauces, and oils in every imaginable shade of brown, red, and black. I recognized sesame seeds, peanuts, chill flakes, and the heaping green of chopped up cilantro, but so much else was entirely a mystery to me. It was a universe of flavor, a world away from my mother’s neat lineup of condiments in the cupboard.
The vendor picked up a chicken, and with a few swift strokes of his cleaver, transformed it into a neat pile of pieces, each with skin and bone. It looked as effortless as cutting soft tofu. He then poured the cut pieces into an aluminum basin.
“All the usual seasonings?” he asked.
My father would quickly reply, “Yes, all of them.”
Then, just as swiftly, the vendor tossed in a scoop of each condiment, naming them off one by one as he went: “Salt, soy sauce, vinegar, ground Sichuan pepper, garlic water, ginger water, sugar, MSG, sesame oil, chili oil, scallions, sesame seeds, crushed chili, crushed peanuts… cilantro!”
I heard myself say: “Could we have extra cilantro, please?”
The vendor smiled without looking up, reached again, this time grabbing a full handful and scattering it over the chicken, like green confetti.
Cilantro—or coriander, as some call it—has been a traveler far longer than any of us. Archaeologists have found its seeds in ancient Egyptian tombs. It crossed the Mediterranean, perfumed Indian curries, spiced the Mexican salsas, warmed Scandinavia pickled herrings, and eventually found its way along the Silk Road into China. The earliest Chinese word for cilantro—胡荽 husui—reveals its origin, as the character 胡 hu signifies things from beyond the western borders. Later the name was changed to 香菜 xiangcai, which literally means “fragrant vegetable.”
Many years later, when I left home for college, I found a small “free market” (自由市场 ziyou shichang) just outside campus. Against the old brick wall, farmers lined the dirt road with their wooden carts, selling pyramids of tomatoes, baskets of brown eggs, cucumbers fresh off the vines, and most of all, bunches and bunches of cilantro.
On a tight budget, I looked on as my classmates with pocket money to spare head to the market. Then I heard other girls talking about a workaround. In the planned economy of the late 1980s, our monthly food quota was fixed. Every student received a fixed monthly ration of cafeteria meal tickets. Like many girls, my quota was more than enough. The meal tickets I didn't need went to the hungry boys in my class; then the small cash they paid me sent me to the market.
I would go buy one bunch of cilantros and one cucumber. I’d wash, chop, and toss them with one spoonful of doubanjiang 豆瓣酱, the spicy Sichuan bean paste. The crisp cucumber, the salty paste, and the crunchy cilantro became the staple of my four years in college.
After graduation, I moved even farther—across an ocean, to Columbus, Ohio. One afternoon, in the fluorescent aisles of Kroger, I spotted it: a small, humble bunch of cilantro bound with a blue rubber band. I stood there, surrounded by unfamiliar vegetables and the hum of refrigerators, and almost cried. If cilantro could grow here, maybe I could too.
Life moved on. I worked, raised two beautiful daughters, and built a home in Oklahoma. Cilantro quietly slipped into the corners of my days. It was never costly, never essential—only occasionally called for—a handful to garnish a bowl of homemade chicken soup or folded into my daughter’s guacamole when she decided it was a Mexican food night. More often, its fate was a slow, tragic wilting in the crisper drawer before I remembered it. Its bold, peppery taste seemed too loud for my own plate. Sometimes I’d pass it in the store, hesitate, then move on. There were other demands, other ingredients more pressing. The girl who once boldly asked for “extra” had grown into a mother measuring out what would fit, what would last, and what could wait.
Until one Thanksgiving, as we gathered around the steaming hot pot, my daughter watched me prepare my dipping sauce—the way I scooped—not a sprinkle, but a generous half-bowl of fresh cilantro into my dipping sauce bowl.
Her eyes lit up with surprise, “Mom, you like cilantro that much?”
The innocent discovery broke the quiet fiction I had carried for so long. I looked down at the bright green in my bowl, unapologetically. “Yes,” I admitted. “I could eat a whole bowl of it, just like this, as a salad.”
One day, in a WeChat group, a friend posted about “World Anti-Cilantro Day.” I laughed, surprised to learn there was even an “Anti-Cilantro Alliance”. Some people said it tasted like soap—a trick of genetics. Apparently, my mother and I didn't share the same receptor for cilantro.
And now I see the pattern repeating: my younger daughter adds extra handfuls to her noodles, while my elder one politely declines—a quiet echo of my mother’s palate, a preference she carries not only in her taste buds but deep in her heart.
Yet last year, when I visited her in Nashville, where she lived with her fiancé in a cozy apartment, she greeted me with, “Mom, I made something for you!” pulling out a glass bowl from the fridge. It was cilantro salad (凉拌香菜 liangban xiangcai).
“From H Mart! The best cilantro, your favorite!” she beamed.
I took a bite. The bright, peppery taste dissolved into a more tender one. It was the taste of being pampered.
My younger daughter attends college in San Francisco. One day she texted me, “Mom, look what I found!” Attached was a photo of Cilantro Noodles from Weee, the online Asian grocery.
A week later, a big cardboard box arrived at my door. Inside were two giant packs of the Cilantro Noodles. I cooked one right away. The noodles turned a faint green when boiled.
As I poured on the dried cilantro flakes, the scent filled up the kitchen. I snapped a photo, took a slurp, and texted back a thank-you note. Steam curled up from the bowl, wetting my eyes. It was the quiet comfort of being remembered.
Oklahoma’s sun is relentless; cilantro doesn’t thrive in my backyard. Occasionally, I could harvest a sprig or two, but as soon as the weather warms—which happens fast—the plants bolt into tall flower stalks. The stems become tough, and a few remaining tender leaves turn bitter, no longer edible.
When my younger daughter comes home for the summer break, she buys bunches of cilantro from Sprouts and makes me her signature summer dish: cilantro noodles. She blends cilantro, soft tofu, sesame seeds, and miso paste into a green sauce, pours it over the cold noodles, tops it with thin cucumber and peach slices, and garnishes it with chopped cilantro and a drizzle of sesame oil. It’s heavenly.
Now, when I make chicken soup on quiet nights, if I choose to indulge the moment, I find myself adding cilantro at the end. As I stir the pot, I imagine my mother sitting at my table. I picture myself placing the bowl before her, watching as she lifts her spoon. Maybe she would push the green leaves to the edge, or maybe—just maybe—she might let them stay and even try. She would smile, the corners of her mouth curving up in that gentle way I always remembered. If only I could cook for her, just for once, in my own kitchen.
When I was little, we lived in a small mountain village at the foot of the Fragrant Mountain (香山 Xiangshan) in the northwest of Beijing. Summer mornings smelled of mung beans simmering on the stove, their faint sweetness mixing with the damp warmth from the hissing steamer. But what woke me were the uneven groans of the old fan—spinning too fast, then too slow. I’d rub my eyes, get up, and see in the mirror the imprint of the bamboo mat on my face—the relentless grid of its weave pressed into my face. It never truly faded, no matter how much I washed it.
Summer days were simple and light, like the cold celery and wood ear salad on the table almost every day. When Mom got off work, the home was warm with the smell of food. My brother and I would sit before a steaming plate of dumplings, his cheeks puffed and flushed as he ate quickly, while I whimpered over the dumplings too hot for me to swallow.
When Mom was busy working, I would fly downstairs and crouch over the dirt, digging for cicadas. Above me, the summer wind murmured through the silk trees in front of our building, their pink blossoms like feathers in cloud light, still coloring my dreams. If I ventured farther onto the hill near our home, I would be greeted by fields of Chinese chaste trees, with their tiny purple-white blooms that perfumed the air. That was what summer smelled like—clean, faintly sweet, and a little earthy. The days were hot, the air heavy, but never unbearable.
The heat was simply part of living. So was the faint fragrance of mung bean soup. A bowl of cooled mung bean soup was always set aside on the kitchen table. I’d rub my dirty hands on equally dirty pants and gulp it down in one go, then find myself licking the bowl for the sweetness—the taste of caring and love I was too young to know.
The first time I saw mung bean cakes was in the village grocery store. I was surprised to learn they shared the same name with the soup. They were dry, crumbly, and hard to swallow, but I loved them. Perhaps it was because, at that time, those square yellow cakes—about the size of my little palm—were one of the few luxuries we could afford.
My mother used to say that summertime must have mung bean soup and mung bean cakes—they have the ability to qu huo (去火), which literally means “to get rid of fire”. But I never fully understood what “fire” she meant to remove. Was it the summer heat the fan tried to blow away? Or the blazing summer air that always made my skin sticky? She always said it matter-of-factly, as if the heat were something that could be miraculously removed with the right food.
When I grew older, I learned that in traditional Chinese medicine, “fire” (火 huo) refers to an “internal heat,” an imbalance that can make the body feel unwell and the mood agitated.
Now, I find myself saying the same thing to my daughters. “Drink more mung bean soup! It’ll help you qu huo.” They are kind enough not to comment, but I wouldn’t blame them if I catch them rolling their eyes. As the air conditioner hums softly 24/7 in the background, turning our house into a seasonless haven, I wonder, too: what fire indeed? There are no sticky nights on the bamboo mat, nor sleepless heat to fend off.
Then there is “internal heat”, the invisible flickering inside: the pain of growing up, the disenchantment of adult life, the ache of figuring out how to belong, how to become. Watching my daughters grow has never felt easy, and as the helplessness simmered during one particularly heavy summer, I found myself standing in front of the stove, stirring a pot of mung bean soup.
The beans tumbled and swirled in the boiling water, their green skins splitting open, curling back, revealing soft, golden hearts within. I dropped in a few rock sugar crystals and a handful of dried goji berries. A few honeysuckle blossoms from the front yard would go in after the stove was turned off.
My younger daughter loves my mung bean soup. She always finishes the first bowl quickly, then looks up, smiling, “Can I have another one please?” My mother was right.
Years later, in an Asian supermarket, I recognized the square yellow cakes on the shelves. They were neatly wrapped, sealed tight in glossy packaging, miles away from the heat and smells of the small village store of my childhood. I stood there for a moment, unable to decide if I should buy one. I turned to my daughter and asked, “Do you want to try these? The mung bean cakes?”
She looked at the cakes, half puzzled, half indifferent, “Mom, if you want them, get them.”
I held the package, wondering if this simple cake could one day become for her what it was for me—a taste of childhood. I wondered if I had given her any food that would, years from now, bring her back to a summer afternoon with me.
That autumn, just before the Mid-Autumn Festival, I decided to make mung bean cakes (bingpi yuebing 冰皮月饼) myself. I soaked the beans overnight, boiled them until tender, then blended them with dates to fold in their natural sweetness. I transferred the mix to a pan, added butter, and stirred it on low heat until the paste thickened and became soft and moldable. Once it cooled, I shaped the paste into small balls and pressed them into molds to form cakes. The mold was pineapple-shaped, so I used matcha powder to color some of the paste green for the pineapple leaves.
When I placed the cakes on a white plate, they looked like a small cluster of fruit captured in moonlight. Watching my daughter’s eyes widen at the sight made me happy. She bit into the cakes, “They’re so soft and buttery! Are they really made of mung beans?” she marveled.
I’ve always felt that the bean sprouts from the supermarket lack a fresh, earthy scent, and for some reason they never have roots. I don’t know if the roots were trimmed off or if it’s just the way they’re grown here. Either way, something about them felt lifeless. So I thought, why not grow my own?
It turned out to be simple. When the first batch of sprouting was ready, I made a cold salad with them—dressed with soy sauce, minced ginger and garlic, and a touch of sesame oil. The moment I took a bite, I couldn’t help but close my eyes. The sprouts were tender yet snappy, fresh with a faint sweetness. It was the kind of taste that makes the corners of your mouth lift before you even realize you’re smiling.
So I calculated the timing carefully. A week before my daughter came home, I started soaking the mung beans. The next day, I rinsed them clean, poked tiny holes in the bottom of an aluminum disposable baking tray—my improvised sprouting tray—and spread the beans evenly across the bottom. Then I covered them with a damp towel, put it in another tray, and tucked them away in a dark corner.
By the third day, tiny white shoots began to peek out. That night, they were already stretching proudly with delicate yellow leaves. Every night, I gave the sprouts a little shower under cool water and covered them again with a moist towel. Each day, the sprouts pushed the towel a little higher until a dense forest of sprouts stood tall. I knew they were ready
When my daughter came home, she found me sitting at the dinner table, sorting the fresh bean sprouts one by one, their slender long roots moist and clean. “Mom,” she said, confused, “you know they sell bean sprouts at the supermarket! You don’t have to go through all this trouble.”
I kept picking through the pile and said, “I’m making your favorite cold bean sprout salad!”
That evening, I set the dish on the table—a tower of sprouts glistening with a light sheen of sesame oil and red chilli. My daughter picked up a bite with her chopsticks, tasted it, and froze for a moment, “Mom … this is so good!”
I wish I had said the same thing to my mother, whose caring filled the days like the cicada’s song filled the summer—tireless and endless. I think of those long sweltering summer days in the village, with my mother in the kitchen before we woke up, standing by the stove, stirring quietly against the heat, coaxing the beans open and making our days cooler and gentler.
So I continue to stir the pot in the quiet of my Oklahoma kitchen, far from the canals of Wuxi and the foothills of Fragrant Mountain. The daughter who licked the bowl for the last taste of sweetness now cooks for her own, hoping to give them a taste to carry forward.
If a tiny, humble mung bean can hold the promise of a golden heart, may we too, find the strength to open our own tough shells, to soften what is hard, and to meet life’s relentless heat with grace.
