The Kitchen God Goes to Heaven

In the first kitchen, a red carp is swimming in circles in a basin set beside the door. The water sloshes along with it. Its red tail brushes the side of the basin, turns back, then brushes it again, as if it were impatiently waiting for someone.

In the second kitchen, very far away, two hands are reaching up to the smoke-stained patch of wall above the stove. An old paper picture is pasted there, its edges curling, its colors faded by a whole year of heat. The hands take the picture down very gently, afraid it might tear.

The two kitchens know nothing of each other. But it is the same day in both: the 23rd day of the last lunar month.

And both households are seeing off the same guest on a long journey.

This guest does not live in the sitting room or up in the loft. He lives right in the kitchen, in its hottest and smokiest spot, where all year long nobody thinks anyone is sitting. Vietnamese people call him Ông Táo, or ông Công ông Táo. On the other side, in China, people call him Zao Jun or Zao Gong, the Kitchen God. Once a year, in the last days of the lunar year, he must leave his stove and go up to the Jade Emperor, the ruler of Heaven in folk belief. There he tells how this household has lived over the past year.

At this point both households face the same puzzle, and the puzzle has two questions. The first is how he will travel. The second, much harder, is what he will say once he gets there.

In Vietnam, the answer to the first question is a fish.

Not a paper fish, not a painted fish, but a real one, a live carp with red scales and gills still pumping. People choose the strongest swimmer in the market and bring it home to a basin of water to wait for the hour. After the offering, they carry it straight out to a pond, a lake or a river, wherever the water is clean, and let it go. Some families release one fish, some a pair, and some a full three, one for each of the three Kitchen Gods, because in Vietnam their set of hats has always been two men's hats and one woman's hat. Vietnam has its own legend about these three, handed down from one generation to the next, but that is another story.

The basin tips toward the water, the fish gives one flick, and it is gone. In the mind of the child watching, the fish that has just dived to the bottom of the pond is on its way up to Heaven.

In the second kitchen, the answer is entirely different.

The paper picture just taken down from the wall is laid aside, and next to it people have set out a paper horse and a handful of dry hay. Then a bowl of clean water, and a few beans. That is drink and feed for the horse, food for a long road. Then the picture, the paper horse and the hay are all set alight together.

The smoke curls up, thin and blue, slips through the kitchen roof and melts into the cold sky. He is gone.

One side sends him down into the water, the other turns him into smoke that rises. It is the same journey by two completely opposite means, and each household finds its own way the most sensible in the world.

The second question is where the fun begins.

Before the picture is burned, people place one essential thing on the offering table, set right there in the kitchen. It is candy boiled from malt syrup. In some places it is pulled into round pieces, in others it is flat, brittle and crisp, and terribly sticky on the teeth. Then they smear that candy right on the god's mouth in the picture.

The idea behind it is both innocent and funny. Some say the candy glues his mouth shut, so he has no chance to tell bad stories. Others say no, the candy makes his mouth sweet, so up in Heaven his words come out sweet as well. With the dish of candy comes a blessing so familiar that even children know it by heart. Its old wording sounds very grand, but its meaning is as plain as can be. Up there, please speak of good things, and down here, bring good fortune home to us.

In the kitchen with the red carp, the method is quite different, but the heart is exactly the same. No one smears candy there. Instead, people lay out a tray. It is a proper tray of offerings, sometimes with a boiled chicken, golden yellow, set before the Kitchen God's altar. There is a new set of hats too, two for the men and one for the woman, enough for all three. Nobody would let one of their own household go up to Heaven's court in old clothes.

So, set all the differences aside, and the two kitchens, so many mountains and rivers apart, are doing something deeply human. They treat him with real kindness on the very day he is about to go and tell stories about them.

And before all that, both households have to do a job nobody enjoys. They clean the kitchen. On this side, people wipe off the soot, scrub the pots and wash every bowl again. On the other side, people even call the day Xiaonian, the Little New Year that comes before the big one. It also opens the biggest cleaning before the New Year, with ceilings swept, dust brushed off and everything washed in one go. In the north of China, the day of seeing him off falls on the 23rd of the last lunar month. Some southern regions move it to the 24th. Each region keeps its own way, and nobody forces anyone else to follow theirs.

The custom is older than both kitchens in this story. People believe it grew from something far more ancient: the respect that people in very early times felt for the fire that cooked the family's food. Many peoples around the world once worshipped a God of Fire in this way. The two neighboring lands both kept that old custom, then each added a little of its own. One added a red fish, the other a paper picture, and neither has to be like the other to be right.

People believe that once he has gone, the kitchen stands empty for a few days, and he only returns on New Year's Eve. In the second kitchen, that very night, people paste a new picture on the wall, its colors still bright, so he has a place to sit for the coming year. In the first kitchen, he comes back more quietly, just as the pot of rice cakes is lifted out and the whole family is staying up to wait for the new year.

But what stays longest in the mind of a child who hears this story is not the fish, nor the picture. It is this thought. All through the long year just past, in the family's own kitchen, someone has been sitting there, quietly watching the household live. He watched whoever came home hungry from school and sneaked a piece of crispy rice from the bottom of the pot. He watched whoever secretly fed the neighbor's cat. He watched the meals when everyone was there, and the meals when only two people sat and waited.

Then at the end of the year, he goes off to tell it all. And the people at home, in both kitchens, hurry to give him a smooth journey and a very sweet mouth.

The red carp flicks once and dives into the green water. The thin thread of smoke from the burning paper slips through the kitchen roof and climbs higher and higher. They look completely opposite, one sinking, one flying. And yet that day, both are heading the same way.