Old Bu's Tofu

Old Bu's tofu shed sits at the very end of Willow Lane, a half-collapsed brick shelter with a chipped bamboo sieve hanging at the door. Nobody in the lane knows his given name; they just call him Old Bu — spoken quick, the syllable lands like the plop of a curd dropping into the pot.

His way of making tofu is the sour-whey method handed down in his family. Ordinary makers use gypsum or brine, relying on a fast hand; Old Bu keeps a clay jar of fermented sour whey and coagulates entirely by eye and wrist. He rises at the third watch, carries the first bucket of water from the Sweet Well, soaks the beans, turns the stone mill, strains the milk, boils it until white foam breaks into fish-eye bubbles — then he lifts the whey bowl, circles the rim of the cauldron, and with a dip and flick of the wrist lets the whey fall like fine rain into the boiling milk. In less than the time it takes to smoke half a pipe, the whole cauldron sets into a tender white slab; a knife goes in with a soft plup, neither scattering nor going dry. That is Old Bu's craft: tenderness with a bone inside.

Others cannot learn it. Two tofu shops in town sent men to watch, went home and copied, and turned out either sour-toothed curd or a pot of scattered flowers. Old Bu hides nothing. 'The whey is alive,' he says. 'You have to become its friend.' The words sound mystical, yet his tofu truly is good — tender without falling apart, and even cold it shows no honeycomb.

Old Bu has a hard rule besides: one vat a day, closed when sold, no extra for any price; and then there is the matter of reading people. When a buyer holds out a bowl, he first glances at the hands — nails caked with dirt yet pretending clean, he will not sell; hands too shaky to steady a bowl, he will not sell; above all, a wandering eye or words with a hollow in them, and he shakes his head: 'The beans are damp today, I cannot make any.'

Three days before the New Year, the new grain house at the lane's east end sent a steward to order fifty catties of tofu, saying the young master would hold a banquet on the sixth and had named Old Bu's 'well-water tofu' by name. Old Bu was straining milk; he looked up at the steward — a smile piled on the cheekbones, but a layer of panic floating under the eyes, and abacus dust still clinging to his cuff. He listened to the catty count and the hurried timing, the words full but always circling away from what banquet it was.

Old Bu knew. He did not expose it; he led the steward to the vat, scooped a little raw milk, tasted, smacked his lips: 'These are old beans, kept more than one autumn, and there is a hurried fire in them — I will not take this order.'

The steward grew anxious and slapped a thick wad of notes onto the stone table. 'The young master said, name your price.'

Old Bu pushed the notes back exactly as they came, and with one hand tipped the just-set, still-steaming tofu — whey and all — back into the slop bucket, splashing the steward's trouser cuff. 'The beans are damp today, I cannot make any. Take it.' He grabbed a handful of old beans from the corner and pressed them over. 'Grind it yourself. Do not use the Sweet Well's water — your well shows a man's reflection, but not his conscience.'

The steward left cursing. Some in the lane pitied Old Bu, saying fifty catties could feed half a month's trade. Old Bu said nothing; he turned the bamboo sieve face-down at the door, and that day did not open.

On the sixth, the grain house did hang lanterns and hold its banquet — but it did not last past the third. The silver had collapsed before the year ended; the young master, having rolled up several neighbors' mortgaged land, fled in the night. When creditors blocked the door, the red silk from the banquet still hung from the beam.

When spring came, Old Bu rose at the third watch as before and carried the first bucket from the Sweet Well. Asked why he had poured out the vat that day, he was turning the stone mill, head down:

'Tofu that breaks can set again. A man who breaks cannot.'

The Sweet Well at the lane's mouth is still sweet. Old Bu's tofu, tender with a bone inside, is as it ever was.