Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2009

QUIXI SHENG ARRIVED IN GERMANY THE SON OF POOR FARMERS. TODAY HE WORKS IN THE BLACK FOREST AS A COOK IN ONE OF THE WORLD’S TOP RESTAURANTS.

If only he had been a bit taller, like his brothers. Had Quixi Sheng not stopped growing at 160 centimeters, he might have become a good factory worker or even a wheat farmer. Just like his father. “You are very short,” his father told him, “too small to take on a physically demanding job.” Too weak, too puny. “At most, you might be of some use in a kitchen.” With that, his father sent Quixi to work in a restaurant in the neighboring city. It was almost a given that Quixi could expect a less-than-glamorous life behind the hot pots and pans, enveloped in the steam of chicken broth. However, things turned out differently. Very differently. Apart from instigating international financial crises, globalization, at times, opens up unexpected windows of opportunity for some. For instance, for a slight man from a provincial cookshop in Northeast China who suddenly found himself in Germany’s Black Forest, in one of the world’s best restaurants. Shandong is a coastal province located in the northeast of China, and it is one of the most fertile regions in the country. Wheat, corn, millet, potatoes and beans grow in abundance in the rich sediment of the Yellow River; the region’s chicken farms supply half of China with its poultry. Moreover, the waters off the coast of Shangdong are rich in fish, crabs and seaweed. It was no accident that the emperors of the Ming Dynasty established their realm here, and that much of what people have on their plates in Beijing stems from Shandong. When Quixi Sheng talks about his childhood and about what he and his family ate in their hut, he affectionately thinks back to the steamed dumplings that his grandmother served. Peasant food actually. But, as with so much of the peasant food eaten around the world, this dish tasted particularly good because it was cooked with love. With love, wheat flour and milk. While his parents worked the fields aided by his older siblings, little Quixi, who was too small for the job, often sat with his grandmother while she held a basket over boiling water, steaming small round dumplings filled with red beans. Sundays they were also filled with meat, cabbage, dried shrimps and ginger.

SETTING SAIL FOR EUROPE!
For Quixi, the smells of his childhood more than made up for his banishment by his father to a life in the kitchen—and actually turned out to be a cloud with a silver lining. Although becoming a cook wasn’t held in much regard, Quixi Sheng, having just turned 15, happily spent his time chopping Pu vegetable for simmering in a milk broth or stewing a squid until it had the right consistency. One day, however, someone said to him: “They’re looking for cooks in Europe.” Quixi Sheng no longer remembers where and when he heard, for the first time, that there might be an opportunity for a little cook from Shangdong Province to cook in a Chinese restaurant in Europe. He soon filled out a form and heard nothing for a long time. Until a letter arrived from Wiesbaden. The letter contained the address of a Chinese restaurant where Quixi was expected to report. A visa and flight were organized; Quixi Sheng could barely sleep out of sheer ecitement. On September 2, 2002 he arrived at the Frankfurt airport on a China Air jet; the little cook looked around, full of curiosity. So this was Germany. Although he couldn’t speak a word of German, he somehow managed to get to Wiesbaden. This might have actually been the end of the story: Quixi Sheng, one of thousands of Chinese cooks who live and work in Germany and who one day return to their home country with their savings. However, Quixi fell in love with a German woman, Ulrike, who quickly recognized his unusual culinary talent—as the saying goes, food is the way to the heart. “You have to move to a fine restaurant,” she said, putting in a call to the very best one in town: the Schwarzwaldstube in Hotel Traube-Tonbach in Baiersbronn. The fact that Quixi Sheng was given a chance to work as an apprentice in spring 2005 in a three-star restaurant for a six-week period was due to his girlfriend’s persistence. Chef Harald Wohlfahrt, often referred to as “the best cook in Germany,” a reputation supported by ten consecutive years of top ratings from the Michelin Guide, had already seen countless apprentices come and go. Quixi Sheng amazed the renowned chef. “I’ve rarely experienced anything like that,” says Wohlfahrt. “Enormous talent paired with enormous diligence.” Wohlfahrt was impressed by the devotion that his apprentice brought to every detail of what he did. Even the way he pulled the pots off the shelf looked graceful—as if a Tai Chi master, and not an ordinary cook’s assistant, were working there. A short time later, Quixi started as a regular cook on Wohlfahrt’s team.

14 HOURS OF INTENSE ACTIVITY
There are only a few more stressful professions than being a cook in a starred restaurant. The job gets underway at nine in the morning and often ends—with only one short break in the afternoon—at around eleven at night. During that time, intense concentrated activity reigns—at hellish temperatures. Quixi Sheng is one of ten cooks and, as entremetier, is responsible for the preparation of the side dishes. With a scalpel the cook carves small carrots into little artworks, then goes on to creating potato rosettes for a gratin while gathering together the ingredients for the creamed gnocchi. “It’s completely different here than in a Chinese restaurant,” he says, in almost perfect German. “It takes many years to learn all of this.” In the beginning, the totally different dining culture confounded him: “In China, people tend to eat very quickly. Each dish is rather small and they are all served at the same time. The table is crowded and guests help themselves to the food any which way.” Not so with French-inspired cuisine, with its complex main courses and its drawn-out timeframe, punctuated with many breaks. The silence that settles over everything in most gourmet temples is rather disconcerting for the Chinese.

Quixi Sheng’s life consists of three different tasks: cooking, sleeping and, if there’s a bit of spare time, adding to his German vocabulary. Four words a day is what his girlfriend Ulrike has assigned him, regularly writing the words neatly in Quixi’s little notebook. Today, the words are: angeben—boasting, abstimmen—agreeing, Gesichtspunkt— viewpoint and demonstrieren—demonstrating. Why these four? Sheng has no idea, but transcribes them in Chinese letters and then attempts to understand their meaning. Suddenly, the chef’s voice calls out: “Table four, red, two number ones, one number two, the fish without shellfish.” All of the cooks know exactly what he means and answer like soldiers to a general: “Oui, Chef!”, then breaking ranks into full activity. With lightening speed Quixi has tossed aside his dictionary and prepares for action. Sheng dreams of one day perhaps creating a new, unique cuisine that would unite the culinary secrets he learned in his home country with those that he’s becoming acquainted with in the Black Forest. It would be a form of cooking that is both fast and slow, and that allows each product to reveal its own distinctiveness, as in French cooking, and yet, as in China, changes with the addition of each ingredient. It would be a way of cooking that exists nowhere as yet. “But I need a bit more time for this,” says Sheng, “because I first have to discover everything that one can possibly discover.” A few years ago, he expressed it in this way: “Those who want to be top must first learn top.”

(Text: Philipp Mausshardt, Photos: Rainer Kwiotek)
Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2009