Buddha Jumps Over the Wall (pinyin: fó tiào qiáng), is also known as Buddha’s Temptation. A revered, classic Chinese winter soup or stew, it is often served for special dinners and state banquets. Regarded as a Chinese delicacy known for its rich taste, and special manner of cooking, it dates back several centuries to the Qing Dynasty, originating from the cuisines of Guangzhou (Canton) and Fujian, a province northeast of Guangzhou. A symbol of China’s gastronomic artistry, it comes with a pedigree shrouded in centuries-old traditions and folklore.
Many stories exist regarding the origin of its curious name. An often repeated version involves a scholar traveling in southeast China. His food for the long journey was preserved in a clay wine jar. At mealtime, over an open fire, he warmed the jar, including his meal inside. One day, the tantalizing aroma of his dinner drifted to a nearby Buddhist monastery where a monk, restricted to a vegetarian diet due to the dictates of his faith, was so tempted by its fragrance that he clambered over the abbey wall. In defending his actions when discovered by the other monks, he declared, “The food was so delicious that even Buddha would jump over the wall!”
Drawing on a vast inventory of over 30 ingredients, the celebrated dish requires an expansive three-to-five day preparation timeline, a recipe covering page after page after page of instructions, and the devotion of over 10 hours of slow cooking. Clearly, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall is a formidable undertaking for any chef de cuisine. Egg Fu Young, Kung Pao Chicken and Mapo Tofu are insignificant trifles in comparison. The embodiment of the cultural richness and epicurean prowess of the kitchens of China and the Far East, Buddha’s soup requires a selection from a plethora of expensive ingredients: shark fins, abalone, scallops, sea cucumber, fish maw (dried fish bladder — a delicacy in Chinese cuisine), soft shell turtle, deer tendon, bird’s nest, beef, pork shoulder and/or pig trotters, lamb, duck, chicken, quail or pigeon eggs, onions, turnips, carrots, bamboo shoots, taro, White Flower Shiitake mushrooms, lotus leaves, cilantro, scallions, garlic, ginger, dried goji berries, Szechuan peppercorns, cinnamon, star anise, ginseng, Zongbha soy sauce and Shaoxing Wine . . . and the list goes on, seemingly forever. For both environmental and ethical reasons, imitation shark fin and farmed abalone are used as alternatives in today’s scullery kitchens.
So how did this paperback cookbook, with its quirky title, induce the culinary world of chefs, hard-pressed housewives, househusbands and other foodie beings to shell out a hard cash investment and ginormous expenditure in time for its purchase? The answer is as engrossing as the fabled soup itself.
The background of Ying Chang Compestine, the author of the book, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, and Other Curiously Named Classic Chinese Dishes, is captivating. The only child of two doctors, she was born and raised in Wuhan, China. In 1966, as a young girl when Mao Zedong launched his Cultural Revolution, she was just 13 years old when the Great Helmsman died ten years later. During Mao’s communist rule, her family was labeled “bourgeois.” The Red Guard, a student-led, paramilitary social movement that Mao used to further his political goals, was bent on destroying symbols of China’s pre-communist past. The guards took all of her family’s belongings and jailed her father twice for his refusals to betray his friends and relinquish his beliefs. To protect her, she was sent to live away with her grandparents. But through those harrowing years, her parents found ways to secretly educate her, hoping she might one day move to America. By the end of 1968, the Red Guard had been dissolved, and she soon graduated from Central China Normal University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and American literature.
At age 23, she immigrated to the U.S. for graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder, receiving an M.A. in sociology in 1990. While there, she met and married Greg Compestine, currently a software engineer. She taught sociology at various universities and colleges in the U.S. and China until 1998. A quick study, she soon branched out in terms of her world of work, hosting several cooking shows, working as a food editor for Martha Stewart’s Body + Soul Magazine, and becoming a spokesperson and recipe developer for Nestle, the world’s largest multinational food and beverage company, and Celestial Seasonings, an American company based in Boulder specializing in herbal teas. At her writer-in-residence program, she spends one to two weeks working with students and teachers to support growth in reading and writing.
When their son was born she began writing, beginning with her first cookbook, Secrets of Fat-Free Chinese Cooking (1997). Following the death of her parents, she became desolate over their loss and her ties to China. She returned to Wuhan to visit their graves, later spending the next six years writing a book based on her life growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She wrote about her father, how she had “watched him save peoples’ lives and fight against the political system in China when it was dangerous to do so.” Written from a young child’s perspective, Revolution is Not a Dinner Party describes the impacts of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution on Chinese citizens. Her book has since garnered over 33 different awards.
Today, she is the prolific author of over 30 books which are sold in multiple languages throughout the world. They range from picture books, to children’s books for young readers, young adult novels and cookbooks. Her 2010 young adult novel, A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts, was adapted into an animated television series.
In Chinese culture, dishes are often connected to a classic legend, a famous person, or a historical event, underscoring the importance of food. The author’s newest book, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, is a graphic novel-like recipe book. In it, she explores the folkloric stories behind much loved Chinese dishes — those she grew up with, cooked with her grandmother (Nai Nai), and prepares for her own family today. Using simple, accessible ingredients readily available at a local grocery store, they invite not only the master chefs to employ their skills, but welcomes the novice to jump in with pots and pans at the ready!
The book’s prologue recounts years spent with her grandmother in China learning to make delicious dishes with names like Ants Climbing a Tree and Ignored by Doggy Buns — strange titles that inspired her to write her book about “curiously named classic Chinese dishes”.
A volume chock-a-block full of comic strip drawings — a unique approach to standard cookbook publications — it is underscored with good humored running commentary throughout. The three main chapters include 26 recipes and stories that covers 3 kinds of appetizers, 16 different main courses and 5 assorted desserts. Each of the recipes includes illustrated stories regarding the creation of the dish and reasons for being baptized with its peculiar name. Followed by this are detailed drawings demonstrating the step-by-step process involved in producing each dish. A section at the end of the book supplies additional information regarding the regional cuisines of China, etiquette involving chopsticks, drinking tea, eating from a rice bowl, and finger tapping.
Buddha Jumps Over the Wall is a distinct approach to the wide, wide world of cookbooks. It is one that stands out for its unique contribution to historic information and cultural understanding.
