Be my guest
Beijing's best-known salon-cum-dinner party happens in the living room of a connoisseur with a touch of Zen. |
In today's Beijing, there is one household that holds a banquet every night for an assemblage whose members are recruited mostly from the ranks of the creative community. Although they do not depend on the host for their livelihood, some do stay around for days on end.
This unbelievable but true story happens in a 300-square-meter apartment in the city's northeastern Wangjing area. Every night around 6, guests start to arrive. The guard at the elevator would blast: "Get off the 6th floor and turn right," startling first-timers before they opened their mouths to ask for directions.
The doorway is littered with dozens of slippers, but few bother to wear them. People slouch on the sofa or hang around the CD collection. The surprise is, many of them don't really know the host Huang Ke; they are friends' friends, sometimes by several degrees of separation.
Over the past seven years, Huang Ke has played host to 20,000-plus people. On some evenings there are as few as seven, but other times as many as 60; and with that many mouths to feed, these guests have to take turns eating. None of them have to pay a penny or bring a gift.
Occasionally, a person would come and eat quietly, not conversing with the host or any of the guests. Nobody knows whose friend he is. But usually, the rule of thumb is, you go with someone who has already been there.
However, the host may not know every old guest, because he does not ask you to sign in or leave your card.
Huang Ke's motto is: "Whoever comes here is my guest. Everyone is equal in my house".
It's not an empty slogan. Sharing his table are ministers and clerks, renowned scholars and college kids, wealthy financers and starving artists. He is courteous to everyone and would never hog you with attention if you are rich and famous.
As a matter of fact, many of his guests are celebrities in a literary or artistic field. They come for the mouth-watering food, and the chance to meet like-minded people. Hence, it has developed a reputation as the city's best-known cultural salon.
Friends who are at odds may bump into each other here. Divorced couples may bring their new beaus and share a table, creating moments of awkwardness. And more than a couple of times, people unknown to each other hit it off sitting around the Huang-style hotpot and ended up sharing more than a hotpot even a bed.
So, who is this Huang Ke? And why does he throw his door open for all arrivals and wine and dine them until some would fall into an inebriated karaoke frenzy or a creative burst?
Huang, a 50-something, is the owner of a business consulting firm. But he has relegated daily management to someone else, focusing instead on his hobbies such as reading and listening to music. The walls of his rooms are plastered with paintings and calligraphy, but he says he is not into collecting things.
"I collect friends or friendship, if anything," he said.
Huang's story has a Hollywood arc, or more accurately, a movie flashback: In 1993, while traveling in Hainan Province on Chinese New Year's Day, the speeding car he was riding in spun out of control to avoid a band of local kids lighting firecrackers. It rolled over a dozen times, killing all three of his fellow travelers.
"I was saved, because I was plump and stuck in the window. So, tell your readers that losing weight is not always a good thing," he said with his characteristic humor.
The accident gave him an epiphany: Life is not only about making money. It's about friendship.
But feasting night after night has its cost. The 20,000-yuan ($2,600) monthly food bill may not be a big sum for a wealthy businessman, but the time and stress of putting on such banquets could be prohibitive.
Consequently, his wife left him. "No mistress of the house could stand such a habit," said a friend. "Now, people can act like schoolboys and don't need to adjust their behavior according to the mood of the hostess."
The maid is another "victim". She was hired from Sichuan Province and trained by Huang. "She has her own cooking assistant," Huang said. Cleaning up after the guests would take two or three hours.
The Huang household consumes more beer than the rest of the building's apartments combined. One brewery even offered to sponsor the banquets with free beer, but Huang declined.
Huang and some of his guests are such epicureans that they may take over the cooking from time to time and get into a culinary can-do flourish.
Huang, a Chongqing native, indulges in the spicy cuisine of his home, but says: "We're expanding on our choices" as masters of other gastronomic schools drop in to show off their specialties.
Huang jokes that since you eat for free, you don't get to order your dishes. But there are two items that have become popular staples: one is a beef hotpot soup and the other, "Huang-style beef".
Now, those who want to customize their orders have a choice. Under the encouragement of friends who feel embarrassed about continually gorging for free, Huang has opened a restaurant in the gallery community, called Salt Under the Sky. The name is partly based on a biblical allegory and also on the fact that salt is considered the source of all tastes. Business was so good that a second outlet soon followed.
"But after they dined in the restaurant, some have come back. They say the frat-house environment is homier," Huang said.
Huang's guests call themselves "huangke", a play on his name. So far, registered guests have reached 10,000, with their own publications penned by illustrious names.
"I heard the huangke committee has five female members who had a crush on me, but I didn't know who they were. In the end, they married other members," Huang laughed.
Friends have ambivalence towards his marital status.
"We want to see him married and happy, but we also fear that'll be the end of the endless dinner party," some admitted.
Song Lin, a poet, describes Huang as a "Buddha sitting at the head of the table".
Zhao Bo, a freelance writer, attributes Huang's generosity to "an ancient spirit", which is "rare in today's world".
Mang Ke, another poet, recalls that "when my wife was pregnant, Huang would personally boil soup and deliver it to my home".
Everyone enthuses about his unconditional friendship.
While the creative minds of the city "eat big portions of meat and drink big gulps of liquor", Huang Ke often smiles and watches them with an attentive yet amused look, rarely lost in the jollity. It seems that all of them are living life with abandon but in slightly different ways.
A novelist has written a fictionalized account of Huang's story, but who can tell what's actually going through his Zen-teel mind? That's when the person, as well as the banquet, takes on a mythical proportion.
(China Daily 04/26/2007 page20)
