The Food Sculptor

• Daniel Hu, Grade 12, Sydney Boys High School
• Short Story
• 2017

Excellence Award in the 'Spread The Word 2017' competition

The sign, trying to forge an identity amongst the glitter and glamour of fast-food restaurants and corporate brands, glowed a deep Chinese red. From each store, manufactured scents of Western food billowed for a good hundred metres from seemingly strategically placed vents. The food sculptor glanced out of the window and scrutinised the sweep of street noise, the men and women, adorned in starchy, pressed designer suits and classy cut dresses. He knew their type, businesspeople who had never felt the pangs and dull aches of hunger, eyes fixated on glowing screens of phones and their faces arranged into passive, emotionless masks. Pitiful creatures. He focused his eyes back onto the plate of food in front of him. It was a meticulous arrangement. The bamboo shoots separated from the lotus seeds, the lotus seeds from the chicken, the chicken from the soy sauce. He held his breath as he applied the finishing touches.

Not simply a dish

More than a mainstream cuisine

This was his story

The store bell rang, disrupting his work. His gaze flickered towards the teenage girls who had walked in, wearing their private school uniforms, adorned in silver jewellery. He instinctively packed away the folded up Chinese Weekly newspapers. He watched them reaching into their pockets for their iPhones before seating themselves, marvelling at the speed their fingers danced across the phone screen. He watched them tidying their hair, some re-applying splotches of make-up on their tanned skin which had an artificial glint to it.

He watched them now in his store, his own business, which he had started three years ago. The girls spoke in shrieks and squeals, pointing their phones at the paintings of his food art, holding two fingers up for no particular reason. He saw them bumping carelessly against the paintings. One tumbled from the wall. He felt the rushing of blood to his head. They knew nothing of scraping a living, watching each dollar that he worked so long to earn being snatched away by the self-service checkouts at supermarkets. They knew nothing of living under the constant fear that the Government will one day find out that he wasn’t a student escaping from the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

He clenched the China knife tightly in his hand as they doubled up in laughter at the broken English on the menu. The knife brushed against the coriander. He glared at them. He had to work five hours to produce a single food sculpture. He had to produce fifty before he was satisfied. The paintings took an equal amount of time, and yet here were these mere high school girls mocking his history, his pride, his story.

He looked for scorn in their faces.

But he couldn’t find any.