Why I Recommend Never Throwing Away Some Kitchen Treasures?

I have had a steamer for at least ten years. It is hard to say exactly when I first started using it; as far as I can remember, it has always been in the kitchen. I am familiar with the scorch marks it has picked up over all those years, and I am confident that, wherever I see it, I can tell at a glance that it is our family’s pot.

This pot was originally used by my mother for cooking. After I graduated, got married, and started living away from home, she gave it to me. Its base has been blackened by fire and smoke. I do not know how many meals must have been cooked in it for it to look like that.

I have moved house several times with this pot, and next time should be the last. Every time I use it to warm rice, make soup, steam corn, or make steamed egg custard, it is quick and heats everything through. Compared with a wok, it always gives me a very reassuring feeling, because once all the preparation is done, I only have to wait leisurely by the side for the food to finish steaming.

Once, because I was in a hurry to cook and the wok was already being used for another dish, I used the steamer to make ginger duck, and it all burnt, haha. It seems that a steamer is a steamer and a wok is a wok; a steamer cannot be used as a wok.

Its base is particularly thick, and the handle is also very sturdy, so I should still be able to use it for many years. If this old object is still usable, I will keep using it. Unless it breaks, I do not think there is any need to replace an old object. I was reminded of the recent film “Haodongxi”, in which the mother throws away old objects to express her break with the past and thereby welcomes new growth. Growth is necessary, but the ability to manage one’s possessions is an excellent quality and should not be discarded. It means that a person is able to take responsibility for their possessions and their life. When progressivism imagines a progressive way of life, it needs to start from such details of everyday life, not from abstract ideas. Keeping an old object conserves resources and protects the environment. That is a very progressive thing, and we should be proud of it.

I bought my cast-iron pot over ten years ago. Ever since I started using it, no other pot has felt quite as good. I bought a two-handled one, and the pot is large enough that, even with a few more ingredients, I can stir-fry with ease. Its thickness means the heat is retained very well once it has been heated, so pan-frying, boiling, braising, and deep-frying all come easily. A quick stir-fry keeps vegetables bright green and full of flavour, while slow-cooking claypot rice leaves a crisp, fragrant rice crust.

After more than ten years of use, the pot has a dark, glossy, oily sheen. My friend and I joke that if we had to flee from famine, we would take nothing but the pot with us; wherever we could find a little fresh water, we could boil a soup that tasted wonderfully fresh. After all these years of daily cooking with all kinds of ingredients, the pot has acquired all sorts of delicious flavours of its own.

Back then, because I loved steak so much, I bought a cast-iron pot. It cost about 500 yuan. I have taken it with me every time I have moved. I have gone from a complete novice who did not know how to season a pot to now having this one well seasoned, and this cast-iron pot has also witnessed the improvement in my cooking. During the period when I often ordered takeaways, it was locked away in a cupboard and probably not used for about a year. Last year I brought it out and used it again; it felt like meeting an old friend.

I am also curious which pieces of kitchenware cannot uphold long-termism. I know non-stick pans are one, but what else is there? What should be thrown away on a regular basis?

I checked Taobao: my cast-iron pot was bought on 26 February 2013, so it has been 13 years! It is the piece of kitchenware I use most every day, for three meals a day through all the seasons. I bought two identical cast-iron pots at the time; my daughter was in secondary school when I bought them. One was kept aside, and after she got married it went with her to her home. Every time I go to my daughter’s home, I still use my own cast-iron pot.

I have a Jianshui purple stoneware steam pot. I think my mother bought it when she went to Jianshui for a holiday. According to her, it is more than thirty years old. Since I was little, we have moved several times, and it has always come with us. Last year, my mother brought it with her to Japan for me. It has never been replaced because steam-pot chicken can only be made in it 😂

During the pandemic, one day I suddenly craved steam-pot chicken and mentioned it to my mother once. After the pandemic, when she and my father came to see me again, she brought me this steam pot from home. Steam-pot chicken is a celebrated dish of southern Yunnan. It also appears in Wang Zengqi’s writing, where eating steam-pot chicken is described as cultivating one’s righteous qi. It was also a dish that always appeared at banquets when I was growing up. The chicken is tender and the broth full of flavour. For a Yunnan household, having a steam pot may be as commonplace as having a takoyaki iron plate in an Osaka home. Last summer, when my mother took the steam pot out of her suitcase, she told me, “This pot must be about as old as you.” I was astonished: it had been with us for so long.

I have a soup pot. As I do not eat much meat these days, I no longer make soup, so I use it for pickling: in winter I pickle napa cabbage and white cabbage, and in summer I pickle watermelon rind. I have been using it for many years.

In fact, I do not throw away almost any of my kitchenware. The main point is that I try not to buy electrical appliances: I have no rice cooker, no microwave, no juicer, and no blender. I can make any dish using just one soup pot, one frying pan, and one mortar.

Because supplies were relatively scarce and there was a limited choice of consumer goods, enamel household items became one of the most common household items in Chinese families in the late 1990s. Compared with other materials, enamel utensils were sturdy, durable, and not prone to rust, and could be “patched up for another three years”. In this collection, many readers mentioned enamel items in their homes. They represent not only the shared memories of that era but also the way people in those days cherished possessions, which is quite unlike that of today.

My family had this enamel basin when I was a child; it may be about 40 years old. It used to be in our home in Shiyan, and now it is in our home in Wuhan.

As I recall, it was first used for serving soup. After we moved to Wuhan, it was not used for a long time and was set aside. Later we used it to hold water, but gradually small rust marks always appeared on the inside, so now it is used to hold very cloudy second-batch water, which is then used to water the plants on the windowsill.

My feelings towards this pot have changed. For a while I wanted to throw it away because I thought the pattern was rather tacky, but gradually I have come to find it more and more attractive to look at.

I have an enamel rice bin made in 1983, picked up on Xianyu for 12 yuan. I have been using it for two years. I do not know how long it was used by its previous owner, or how long it had been idle. Since I bought it, it has been used continuously to store grain and rice, keeping bugs at bay. When I moved from Tianjin to Chengdu, I brought this bin with me.

Previously, the rice at home was infested with bugs, and they spread back and forth among different grains, which was a real headache. Then I bought this bin, put all the rice into it, and it was never infested again. This lightweight enamel rice bin is more to my liking than ceramic.

My parents’ home also has the same model enamel bin that my maternal grandmother brought. In winter it used to be kept in the courtyard to store vegetables. Later, when they moved house, they did not take it with them. I miss it very much and hope it will find an owner who also knows how to cherish it.

Since I can remember, our family has had a blue-rimmed enamel bowl. I am told that when I was little I liked to wear a bowl as a hat and broke so many bowls that this one was kept especially for me. When I was a child, I used it to hold rice and dishes; when I grew up, I used it to eat porridge; later still, after we got a microwave, only hot porridge straight from the pot could be served in it, and cold porridge was put into glass bowls and heated in the microwave. Now it sits in the cupboard with a pile of “microwave glass cookware”, in semi-retirement. In my memory, it has always been old; the scratches on it and the nicks on its rim are just as they are now. The only detail that is hazy in my memory is the pattern on its side, like flowing water and like drifting clouds. As a child, I always imagined this was a fairy mountain or the Heavenly River in Journey to the West. I had always thought it was blue, but when I looked at it just now I found that it was green. Looking more carefully, I discovered that the bottom of the bowl even had a blurred trademark for a certain ceramics factory. I had not expected an old object to still hold new discoveries.

The enamel cup the school gave me during primary school military training has been with me for 33 years. During the training, I used it for washing and drinking. Most classmates casually threw theirs away when the training ended, but I have kept mine until now: soaking beans, serving soy milk, filling it with water, scooping rice, scooping noodles – it is especially handy. Although similar enamel cups are available online now, none are any better in terms of material or feel.

Once, when I went camping, my friends’ equipment was all excellent – you could tell it was expensive – and I brought it along. It was cold; I poured a cup of hot tea and cradled it in my hands; it felt especially warm 😍

In 2016, when Xuan Lin left Beijing for the first time, she left me quite a few things, but one red enamel pot was the exception. Seeing how much I liked it, she said to me, “Tanzi, I cannot give you this. It is my favourite. It is so heavy, and I carried it all the way back from Europe. What’s more, it was expensive; I had to make up my mind to buy it.”

Hearing this, I was not disappointed at all; I only felt that my taste was excellent.

At the end of 2019, when she returned to Beijing again, fate brought us together as work friends once more. I saw that red enamel pot again. Every morning, an aroma would drift from the pantry: Xuan Lin was making brown sugar and ginger water.

Xuan Lin could be careless at times. That day, what drifted from the pantry was not a sweet smell but a burnt one. She had forgotten to turn off the heat and scorched the pot.

The brown sugar, ginger, and red dates… had now become a black substance stuck to the bottom of the pot. Xuan Lin soaked it and scrubbed with steel wool, but there was still a blackened layer on the bottom. “Tanzi, this pot cannot be saved. It has already been boiled dry several times; it tends to stick. Why do I always do this?”

She was hard on herself about her beloved pot, and her dejection had reached a certain tipping point of collapse. I spoke up. “Stop scrubbing, just give me the pot. I’ll take it home and deal with it slowly. I’m not fussy; it should still be usable.”

Xuan Lin turned to look at me and said, “All right, Tanzi. Then count this as an early birthday gift for you.” I was very happy. That way, no one had to keep feeling sad. Now, I also use this pot every day to make brown sugar and ginger water,

This pot is so handy. Thank you, Xuan Lin; thank you for giving me such a wonderful gift.

I bought this kitchen knife at the market and have been using it for nearly 30 years; I was already using it when I was in primary school. The blade is light but sharp, and it is very handy for cutting and mincing meat. I also started cooking with this knife in primary school, and it has been with me as I made many dishes. It has never changed hands, but it has been with us through many house moves, and I have always liked using it. It really is durable; it has never been repaired. You rarely find this kind of one-piece cast-iron kitchen knife on the market now, with the blade and handle cast as one, and it is especially light. Most knives now have stainless-steel blades and plastic handles, and the whole thing is rather heavy. I am fortunate that my kitchen knife rarely rusts.

I remember that when I was little, I was very afraid of using a knife. I often spent time in the kitchen helping, and I found it really cool to see Dad use this kitchen knife to chop vegetables, so I wanted to try it too. Later, I got used to it.

The oil jar at home has now been in use for seven or eight years; I bought it at the market. In my home, the oil jar is a position that must be filled, not a particular object.

The oil jar is not for new oil but for old oil. Around here, every household has the custom of doing a round of frying before the New Year, usually for crispy fried balls, battered pieces of carp, and strips of hairtail. The leftover clear oil cannot be used up in one or two meals, especially as during the New Year period there is also a rule about not using the fire. Over the years, who knows how many oil jars have been smashed, but around the New Year it always gets to drink until it is half-full, and then slowly empties again.

The garlic mortar also has something to do with the New Year. In the south, people like to dip their dumplings in soy sauce, while in the north a vinegar bowl has to include minced garlic and sesame oil. The dumplings queue up and take their turn rolling through it, and before I know it, I have eaten thirty. The garlic pestle is often mislaid, but the mortar is quite solid.

This soup ladle has been in use since I was little, for more than 35 years. It was what came to our family when my father and my uncle split the household. Seeing it always brings to mind snippets of meals I once shared with my family. It is mostly used in lettuce soup, noodle soup, and all sorts of soup. It connects the flavour of home, people to one another, and people to food. I hope to keep it and continue using it in the future.

Our family has a small implement made from bone for scooping filling. I quickly looked it up and found that it is called a cow-bone dumpling filling spoon. Whenever we need to make dumplings, it is bound to appear on the table. It is flat, wide at one end and narrow at the other. As a child I was very curious about what it was; when I heard it was made from cow bone, I had thought that, like a homemade toy made from sheep’s knee bones, it was all a natural shape, so for a while I believed that a cow had a bone that just grew like that. I only found out later that it had been ground into shape.

It has been in use since my maternal grandmother’s time. Later it was given to my mother, who used it when she began learning to make dumplings. It was still being used when I began learning to make dumplings, so it must be about thirty years old.

I am not used to using it, so I only use it occasionally, but every time we make dumplings it is there. I think it is far more useful than a spoon. Compared with a spoon, this “spoon” is flat, and it is less likely to leave filling behind. Sure enough, the shape of everything has its reason for existing.

It “migrates” to wherever the dumplings are made, so it is also one of the important members of the family. Not only are we used to it, but we also have many lovely memories. It has not been repaired so far, and I hope it can keep us company for longer.

Does anyone still know what this is? We call it a grater. It can be used to grate solid vegetables such as potatoes, radishes, and cucumbers into smooth strips or shreds, not rough ones. This grater must be at least 30 years old; it has been in use since my grandmother’s generation. Strangely enough, whenever I use it to grate something, I always end up nicking my hand and bleeding, but the older generation never make this kind of mistake. Although there are now plastic grater boards and 304 stainless steel graters, our family still uses this old grater, just as we still use the old loofah at home for washing up, even though cleaning cloths are available now.

There are still quite a lot of old items in the countryside, such as the basin used for kneading dough and the tray used every winter for making dumplings. It is made from sorghum stalks and looks rather like a bamboo raft; the finished dumplings are laid out in rows on it. When many people make dumplings together it is very lively, and we are still using it now.

The first old item is the mortar and pestle; it has been around for at least 30 years. Among the Jinuo people, everything can be pounded. You can pound na mi or aubergine, and cooked food as well. Meat and gan ba, for example, are cooked first and then pounded, while other cold-mixed dishes are pounded directly.

The second item is a bowl. When we go up the mountain to work, we put rice in it. Because it is woven from bamboo and is light and breathable, the rice does not easily go off.

The third item is a knife sheath. Compared with the first two, it has not been in use as long, but for me it is already an old item; I have been using it for seven or eight years. Every time I go into the rainforest, I use it to keep the iron knife at my waist. Why is it also a kitchen item? Because on the mountain we can use it to cut banana trees, and then use banana leaves to make bao shao! My motto is: In the rainforest, everything can be bao shao! Bao shao is made by wrapping food in freshly picked banana leaves and roasting it over a fire; there are dishes such as bao shao pork, bao shao aubergine, and bao shao small fish. Banana leaves can be used for bao shao, and when cooking outdoors they can also serve as a tablecloth. The white tender core inside the banana trunk tastes a bit astringent, but it can be used to quench thirst, while banana blossom can be stir-fried with minced meat. So although this iron knife and sheath may not look much to do with cooking, they can truly be counted as items in our Jinuo people’s kitchen.

In rural areas of northeast China, there is a kind of dining table called kaobianzhan. Unlike the fixed dining tables popular today, it is foldable. It is set up only when it is needed, and is otherwise folded up and kept against the wall, taking up no space at all, which is how it got its name. It is also different from modern folding tables in that it is made up entirely of joined wooden parts, with no iron nails or similar connectors. The tabletop is not supported by four legs crossed in pairs, but by three legs: one leg is completely fixed, one is the central pivot, and one is movable. Every time the table is set up, it unfolds around the central pivot like a pair of compasses, then finds a slot under the tabletop and locks into place. Once that is done, the table is set. Even now, looking back on the whole process, I still get a sense of indescribable elegance.

Many children from the northeast mention “kaobianzhan” with a note of nostalgia and warmth in their voices, because when it is unfolded, it is always a time for people to come together, such as a family eating, drinking, making dumplings, writing couplets, playing cards, or a few children after school getting together to do their homework. It stands there obediently, so quiet, yet as if alive, keeping company with the family it belongs to and listening to their lives. When it is unfolded, its golden tabletop seems so very large, having held so much: so many plates of food, so many bowls of rice, so many cups of drink, so many words. Once, that golden tabletop was like an eternal world to me. Until one day I discovered that beyond home there was a larger world, always in motion; at that point, the table that would never be set up again, leaning against the wall, seemed so very small. But that kind of eternal attachment to people or things it fostered in me always makes me feel that, even if we leave, it will still stand alone in this vast world, waiting for something.

The old pickle mother water from home was brought to my home in Chengdu ten years ago. My mother scooped it from the pickle jar at the family home in Wushan, Chongqing, and bottled it. It has been in continuous use at home in Wushan. A conservative estimate would put it at thirty years; a less conservative one would suggest it has been circulating since my grandmother’s time.

My first impression of the old pickle mother water was at my childhood home in the old town of Wushan. Later, when the Three Gorges reservoir began to fill, the entire old town went underwater and the whole county town moved to the hills; the pickle jar went with it. Then my mother brought the mother water from home to Chengdu. The mother water was also shared with a friend in Hangzhou, who, once it had been well established, passed it on to a friend in Shanghai. Later, pickling workshops were held in different cities, and the mother water began to spread across the country.

There was once a major crisis. I once opened the lid and took out some pickles to use in a stir-fry, but I forgot to put the lid back, leaving it exposed to the air all day. By the time I noticed, the surface had developed a very thick layer of white bloom. I was scared out of my wits; I carefully fished out all the white bloom, put in fresh vegetables, salt, and baijiu, and did not open the jar for a month. When I opened it again, everything had returned to how it had started. The old pickle mother water’s vitality is as tenacious as the elders.

In many places in Sichuan and Chongqing, when it comes to making pickles, people generally just take some out and eat them. Our family has always used the pickle water in cooking, and in some dishes it stands in for vinegar. A little dish my mother has always been able to make since I was little is called ma ji broad beans. The dried broad beans are dry-fried in a pan over a low heat; ginger, garlic, and green Sichuan pepper are pounded in a stone mortar, soy sauce is added, then a spoonful of pickle water, to make the sauce. The fragrant, stir-fried broad beans soak up all the liquid, numbing, aromatic, sour and refreshing, just right for summer when the appetite is poor. Only later did I learn that it is an old Sichuan dish. I do not know where my mother learned this dish, nor why she so ingeniously replaced the vinegar with pickle water. It is truly a mysterious family recipe. Last year, when I went home for Chinese New Year, I mentioned this dish to my mother, and she made it again; it still had the taste of childhood.

Sister Chicken hatched from an egg so long ago that I cannot remember how many years it has been. When it comes to noting her age, which cannot be determined, the calendar year loses its meaning.

Reportedly, Sister Chicken has lived in a seedling nursery, a chicken farm, a farm, and an orchard, then in the home of a friend of my parents whose name I do not remember, and then in our car boot and at our home.

We might always expect that behind “long-termism” or similar life-philosophy narratives there lie romantic, or at least tender, stories, but Sister Chicken remained in the home for so long simply because she could burn through her lifespan in exchange for eggs, and that is merely sad, or at least somewhat stifling, and the protagonist of the memory is imprisoned in a corner of the vegetable garden, her feet and claws bound to the root system of the South African leaf—she always liked to rummage, peck, and shit all over the garden, so my mother tied her up. Did it work? Obviously it did. Most of the time she could only stay within a small circle 100 cm in radius around the South African leaf, and only on rare occasions could she once again shit everywhere and be severely scolded by humans, and once, when the family went away on a long trip, she thrashed her legs and flapped about, hung herself on a branch to the southeast, and struggled until her claw was swollen with blood, and no one knew about it for days.

Whenever the weather turns hot, Sister Chicken develops a hormonal imbalance: she lays small eggs, gets scurf, becomes fussy and won’t eat. My mother grumbles and curses, buying her fresh corn kernels every day, yet will not let her into the house because Sister Chicken stinks; she is only let in at night, into a cardboard box to sleep. One summer was perhaps too hot after all; the sun warped until it lost its shape, and it rained for months on end. From then on, Sister Chicken developed depression. All day long, dazed, she just stood there, not struggling, doing nothing. Everyone knew she was unwell, but no one did anything except top up the rice and change the water; no one had even the heart to put her down. Sometimes I crouched beside her, pacing, trying to provoke some reaction (a stupid jailer), but she remained as if carved from wood. This long, gradual torment ravages the nerves of all the humans under the foul Lingnan sky who are connected to her yet stand by. This endless silent violence curses; dusk devours the souls of all the living creatures under the eaves who sleep with her yet keep silent. And forever I remember that a memory is a taste — after she died of a cold, we ate her.

The soup is sweet.

What other old items are in your kitchen?

Feel free to leave a comment and tell us your story with it.

Unless otherwise noted, all images are submitted by readers.

Compiled by: Kai Rui

Layout by: Ming Lin