The Dumplings

Every Chinese New Year, Mei-Ling made dumplings. This was not a casual activity. It began the evening before with the preparation of the filling — pork and prawn, her grandmother's recipe — and continued the next morning with the folding, which she did with a precision that was somewhat intimidating to watch. She taught me to fold and I was terrible at it and she was very patient about this. She never made fewer than two hundred. There were never leftovers.