Sour Plum Drink in the Beijing Summer
In my grandmother's Beijing courtyard, the sour-plum jar lived on the refrigerator door through July. She checked it before breakfast, and my grandfather drank from it standing beside the open door after bicycle work in the lane.
The jar on the refrigerator door
My grandmother's sour-plum drink was dark enough to stain the enamel pot. She refused to scrub away the brown ring at the bottom. "That is the pot's memory," she said, and returned it to the stove when the jar ran low.
The jar was for the whole courtyard, not only our table. A neighbor leaning through the doorway received a glass before the visit had properly begun. My grandfather poured his standing up, set the glass by the sink, and went back outside to finish a bicycle.
Yellow paper packets from the shop
The dried ingredients came from the shop at the mouth of the lane. The shopkeeper folded each kind into yellow paper while my grandmother watched the scale. At home she opened the packets across the counter and checked the dark plums, hawthorn, peel, and flowers with her fingers.
Mung-bean soup belonged to quieter afternoons, winter-melon tea to another kind of jar, and water chestnut with sugarcane to southern kitchens. In our courtyard, the sour-plum pot carried the strongest smell and drew the most visitors to the doorway.
Waiting before the flowers
My grandmother watched the steam before adding the osmanthus. She would not hurry that part. I saw her hold the tin above the pot, decide the liquid was still too warm, and put the lid back on the tin.
At night she strained the pot, filled the glass jar, and left the second, paler pouring for the next day. The refrigerator door closed with its familiar heavy click.