Mom Gossip: Zhuo by Tabia
On collapsible foot baths, grieving, and the benefits of soy milk
In honor of Mother’s Day, we’ll be publishing two new editions of Mom Gossip this week… enjoy! 💋
TCM Mom Gossip: Collapsible foot baths, grieving, and the benefits of soy milk
My mother Zhuo and I are very close, especially since I’ve been in my twenties, and I was so happy to have this opportunity to talk to her about her wisdom on health and living well. Zhuo is a professor of East Asian linguistics. She is incredibly active and energetic. With my dad, she works in her beautiful garden daily and forages for mushrooms in Oregon’s forests. She loves to run and use her infrared sauna from Costco. She also travels a lot to attend conferences and see her relatives in China. I was surprised and moved by how this initially structured conversation revealed, and how connected I felt to her during it.
Growing up in Germany and then in the US with a Chinese mother, we often clashed on her dictates, which I wrote off as superstitions. I hated being told not to drink cold drinks or sit on cold surfaces. I’ve since learned that she is usually entirely correct. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which she subscribes to, is a complex holistic system that is thousands of years old and focuses primarily on balance within the body. We talked about how to eat well, how to live a balanced life, and what “ancestor worship” really means.
Mom Gossip with Zhuo
Aries Sun, Libra Moon, Cancer Ascendent
Oregon, USA
T: For me, one of the most important parts of health is the way that I eat. You’ve taught me a lot about that, and you’re coming from a Chinese philosophy of eating. Can you tell me about how you think about health and food?
Z: You know, I eat pretty simple foods, right? I eat a lot of vegetables. I need a green dish for every meal. It could be a separate dish or it could be mixed with tofu or meat. I use natural ingredients. I don’t buy processed foods. Of course, now I’m growing my own green onions and that kind of thing so I can just pick fresh ingredients in the garden. And especially in summer I can just have a lot of fresh produce.
T: You have so many good things in the summer. I love your lettuce and cucumbers.
Z: Yes! I like a balance of everything. I like warming foods when it’s a little cold. When summer turns into fall, you start eating more warming foods — lamb, hot pot, that kind of thing — to get your body adjusted to the cold season. And I like soup. Broth, chicken broth, or vegetable or beef broth; I think those are very nourishing. And it can be very flexible, you can toss in vegetables, and also get minerals from adding seaweed and beans. But I’m pretty open to a lot of ingredients. I try to eat less carbs; I do have rice or noodles, but I just don’t like if a dish is only pasta, all carbs. Once in a while I like a pizza or that kind of thing. And now I’m eating less red meat; once a week, maybe a steak. I eat two boiled eggs every day.
T: What is a typical day of food like for you? What did you eat today?
Z: Two boiled eggs, two slices of the rye bread your dad made with honey and black sesame paste on it. It gives me energy. I had banana and yogurt. And for dinner I usually make rice and a stir fry. So for dinner maybe I’m thinking a kung pao chicken.
T: Dad will be so happy, he loves that.
Z: Or mapo tofu, that’s his favorite. But yeah, I just cook from scratch. And I like to go with the seasons. In winter I eat more kale or collard greens. I also like yam. Sometimes a meal can just be baked yam with some tofu or whatever.
T: Yam is a great meal.
Z: Right? With butter. Also it used to be natural for me to have a beer, but now I rarely drink alcohol. Sometimes just a few sips a week, like if dad is drinking a beer I’ll have a few sips, but I won’t have a bottle like I used to. It feels good, my face is less puffy. There’s research that shows that no amount of alcohol is actually healthy. But people enjoy it on social occasions, everything in moderation. So that’s a change that I like.
T: You travel a lot for work as a professor. Going to conferences, giving talks, etc. What do you do to feel good while you travel?
Z: I actually got this collapsible bowl that I put in my suitcase. Did I tell you about it? I’ll show you. And I also use epsom salt. It’s very good, very cheap. So when I travel, this collapsible basin is perfect. Because I realized that a hot foot soak really helps me fall asleep, which I sometimes have trouble with when I’m on the go or sleep at irregular times. So that is a deliberate wellness intervention. I also carry a resistance band in my suitcase to exercise.
T: How do you manage stress in your daily life?
Z: Now I’m at a point where I’m not really stressed about things. I can separate myself. I try to be light hearted. And sometimes things will sort themselves out without me worrying about it. If people in the department are emailing back and forth, I don’t have to participate immediately. I guess I’m more relaxed now, which is so helpful, and I don’t feel anxious. Take walks, think things through, and talk to people.
T: Yeah.
Z: Yesterday, I was listening to NPR, and they were talking about this thing called “wind phone.” A phone in the wind. It’s a public phone that you put somewhere outside. But it’s not connected to anything. It’s for people who need to talk to their loved ones who passed away, but they still have things to say. And they just go out there and hold the phone and talk to them. It’s like make-believe. It’s supposed to be very helpful with grief. You know, sometimes I talk to my dad. And I find it very helpful. If there’s a big thing that I worry about, I’ll talk to my dad and seek his help.
T: And do you feel like you can hear what he would say in that situation?
Z: I think so. Sometimes I’ll just give him some flowers and talk. I think a wind phone could be even more helpful. Right now, I have his photograph, so I talk to his photograph as if it’s the real person. You have to have a venue for your emotions, whether it’s a friend, or family, or like I talk to my dad. A lot of the times when I talk to my dad, I’m seeking his help. Like, “Ohh, I can’t get ahold of Kendra [her youngest daughter, my sister], maybe she got abducted! Please help me, and make sure she is ok!”
T: And you feel better.
Z: I mean, I understand that it may not help, but it helps me a lot emotionally. In a situation like that, I brought him a lot of lilac flowers. So I first thank my dad, for protecting us all this time, for the time that things have been great, and then I tell him my concerns. That’s something we do in China. Every time we go back home, my sister and I drive to the graveyard to see the tombstone and sweep it, and to bring food, and then talk to our ancestors. My grandparents, my father, my uncle, they’re all in the same graveyard. We first will report all the important events. Like, I’ll say, “Tabia and Kendra are doing great, thank you so much for the blessing and protection.” And we hope they will continue to bless the family.
T: What kind of food do you bring?
Z: The food you bring for an offering has to be in odd numbers, like three apples, three peaches, and maybe five cookies that my dad especially likes. Five dumplings, some Chinese liquor. And we’ll burn some incense and chrysanthemum flowers to spread the petals over the tombstone. This kind of ritual is of course designed more for the living. So there’s an almost religious aspect to it.
T: Do you think there are enough rituals in American culture to connect us with our dead?
Z: I don’t think so. It’s a different culture. The Chinese, we don’t have organized religion, or my family doesn’t. But there is this so-called “ancestor worship” (at least in Western cultural anthropology, it’s described as “ancestor worship”). But “worship” isn’t accurate to me, it’s more about emotional connection. It’s a continuation of the relationship. And, of course, my sister always imagines this other world in which my father and our grandparents are living. So there’s this imagination of the other world, where your grandparents are all living, so you can talk to them collectively. You saw Mulan, right?
T: Yes.
Z: It’s an artistic representation of this ancestral relationship. It’s exaggerated, but the idea is correct. You talk to your ancestors about the things happening in this world, and you hope they have the power to help you, to advise you. So I think that’s part of our emotional health, that connection. In this culture, people go to church. I understand that, I understand the emotional need. But for me, it’s just not as intimate as talking to your parents.
T: That’s the most foundational relationship!
Z: Yes, this spiritual bond versus your actual bond. I choose my actual father. That bond is more real to me!
T: We were talking about aphorisms and metaphors the last time we spoke on the phone. Do you know any good aphorisms about health?
Z: There’s this saying, 冬吃萝卜，夏吃姜 (Dōng chī luóbo, xià chī jiāng). It means, “winter eat radish, summer eat ginger.” The principle is such that in winter it’s cold out, and radish is cooling. You want to eat some radish, so that your body is in tune with nature, to reduce the disharmony. Otherwise you’ll be susceptible to illness. The Chinese also totally encourage ice water in the summer. Although it’s not about the actual temperature of the food, per se; ice water is bad in all seasons. Somehow it makes your body less sensitive to different functions. It’s numbing. And it’s believed in Chinese medicine that it destroys your spleen. The spleen is very sensitive, it must be protected, so you shouldn’t have things considered extreme, like very cold icy things. There’s a temperate, moderate ideal. Chinese people like eating congee.
T: You have a delicious congee you’ve made before. It’s called eight or ten treasures?
Z: 八宝粥 (Bābǎozhōu). The eight treasures are jujube, peanuts, azuki beans, black rice, sweet rice, goji berries, and some people put in lotus seed, and I think the last thing is another grain, like pearl barley. You put everything together and you cook it. But a lot of the ingredients need to be pre-soaked, like the beans.
Chinese medicine has this idea of dampness, it’s an abstract concept, but there’s certain symptoms, like moist hands or acne. So pearl barley and adzuki beans drive our dampness out so that our bodies are more energetic. Because dampness can make us feel sluggish.
Right now I’m making soy milk a lot. If you want a machine I can order you a machine. I make lots of soy milk.
T: I would love that. I love soy milk.
Z: And you can use the leftover soybean pulp to make a kind of cornbread. I like it so much, I grew up eating a lot of it. My dad used to make it. In my childhood, it wasn’t desirable, because you eat it because you don’t have enough rice, so it was a less desirable food. But now I love it! There’s a lot of things that I had as a child that I now like a lot, like millet. Millet congee is very soothing, it’s very healthy. You can go to a Chinese store to get it, because the millet in american supermarkets is not the right one. It’s not fine enough. They're tiny, totally small, yellow. The American millet for some reason takes too long to cook. I just cook it with water. I have it for anything, but mostly breakfast.
T: I like millet congee with honey. I have all my congee with honey.
Z: Soy milk with honey is good. I’m going to send you a small soy milk machine to your address. You can buy a big bag of organic soy beans on Amazon. Our country is a big soybean country. I bought a seven pound bag for not much money. It can last a long time. It’s good protein, it’s good for women. The natural estrogen in it gives you good skin.
T: Are you still sauna-ing?
Z: I did last night!
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