I Cooked Chinese Postpartum Cuisine to Hide the Fact That I Didn't Want Kids

My mother was the most excited about my yue zi project, and I turned to her expertise as she walked me through obscure herbal Chinese ingredients. My niece would be her first, and perhaps only, grandchild. The baby was a blessing that was long overdue. Most of my younger cousins were having their second kid already. A proper Taiwanese daughter would feel guilty for refusing to fulfill this dream for her.

I cooked my grandmother’s congee recipe, and her version is packed with extra ginger, considered to be a warming ingredient, ideal for new mothers. Ginger is quite pungent when fresh, but it becomes sweeter when cooked. Similarly, as I nourished my sister-in-law with ancient yue zi recipes and cared for my niece by proxy, my desire to nurture her grew.

Week one of yue zi is focused on detoxification. After birth, the Chinese believe that lochia (postpartum bleeding) and expulsion of toxins must be helped along with ingredients such as liver, wood ear mushrooms, and roasted licorice root.

The very first dish that I made for yue zi was Sheng Hua soup, an herbal concoction consisting of Pao Jiang, Carthamus tinctorius, Chinese angelica, Semen persicae, lovage root, and roasted licorice root. The recipe is simple but requires attention: First, soak the herbs in three cups of water for 30 minutes, then boil until it reduces to one cup of liquid. Repeat the process with a second set of herbs. Finally, mix the two cups of liquid together to serve.

The strong herbal flavor is also strangely sweet while bitter at the same time. My sister-in-law dutifully choked it down each morning. We bonded while enveloped in a cloud of warm peppery-spiced fumes in the morning. Ginger’s sharp scent inspires focus, and it made me aware of my subconscious feelings of insecurity about my place in the family, emotions that I didn’t even know that I had.

My stance toward pregnancy is unequivocal: I’m horrified by the idea of breastfeeding, stretch marks, the idea of having your legs up in stirrups as a team of doctors and nurses stare intensely at your nether regions. And having a baby is not like in the movies. When my niece was born, my sister-in-law wasn’t handed a freshly washed, cherubic baby wrapped up nicely in a blanket. Instead, shortly after exiting her womb, my niece was unceremoniously plopped on her chest, bloodied and dripping with slime, sans blanket.

Giving birth is damn traumatic on the body. It makes sense that week two of yue zi is all about “warming” and repairing the body. 

Week three started with black chicken herbal soup, believed to regulate a new mother’s hormones and aid in kidney and liver functions. The appearance of black chicken, a.k.a. silkie chicken, can be disturbing: It’s black from the skin down to the bones.

The soup is easy to make; one of the main ingredients is just time. After blanching the chicken, add ginger, angelica root, goji berry, red dates, milk vetch root, lovage root, rice wine, sesame oil, and water. Simply let it simmer for 45 minutes, and the healing soup is ready to go.