The most mysterious place to eat

                        --Hidden City of [Xiao Wu Family Feast]

write (an article for publication) | Photography by Huang He

    Beijing is a place where hustle and bustle and serenity never disturb each other, and where busyness and leisure exist peacefully without any deficit to each other. This is the unique atmosphere of Beijing. The years have given the city a thick and heavy coating, while at the same time bringing together unimaginable amounts of money and supreme power. It's like the most expensive artwork in an auction house that can't escape the fate of being measured by money. No story is too strange to be told here, because they are real.

    Xiaowu Family Feast] exists here like a story, and it is rumored in the circle of celebrities from all walks of life. It is the most mysterious place to eat in Beijing. Because you can't find it. But you don't have to pay a dime if you become a guest.

    Takeshi, there are two identities. One forCOGITOBrand Partner, II is a high metaphysical person with a great sense of privacy. She is a person who really likes to cook, and likes to trace the emotion in food. One of the videos in the Second Shift Dining Hall is called "Anyone who can cook for you every day is true love", and I am only one in a million who clicked on the video before going to bed. This click was like a bullet of destiny that hit me. This infinite power pushed me deeply into Xiao Wu's story.

    "Cooking is a relaxing process for me, when my mind is in turmoil I choose to cook a meal and connecting with food calms me."

Xiao Wu's family feasts are never publicized, it's all about friends bringing friends. The first time, you must have come with curiosity and doubt, the second time, you must have come because of the flavor.

   "I find people who can tell stories at my house parties to be charming and engaging."

    Yes, stories are what you can pay for. For stories, most people like to hear about legends, about lives that are different from their own, different attitudes. Especially stories of famous people.

   "Mr. Zhou Guoping, Sa Dingding, Zhang Yuqi, Chen Ji, He Jie, ah ah ah many la! They all come to my house for dinner regularly. In the screen or in the book, I felt they were distant from me, but they sat in my family dinner and I instantly felt that there was no distance, that in my house I was the protagonist, and they didn't feel like stars."

    It's just that the storyteller has long since become the listener. I later learned that she never gave any exclusive interviews. Maybe I never interviewed her either, we just spent time together.

Every color has a flavor that belongs to it.

    "The green of a cucumber is not the same as the green of a bean; each color has a flavor that belongs to it. The permutations and combinations of different ingredients are really a conversation between yourself and the flavors, a game with the ingredients. The moment I pick it up, it's saying to me that the game is on!~I never think about how a dish should taste when I'm making it."

    I've been eating intensively at Takeshi's house.9There were times when the meal was full of guests and times when we were alone. Each time she and I would have a progression of emotions, some times I would stay and watch a disk, other times we would walk together to a nighttime movie. And I never really got to see her cook.The scent of each dish in my memory is a flavor she shared with the food.

    Vu uses simple ingredients and doesn't make up recipes on purpose. She believes that flavors are memories of past lives, and anyone who can come to dinner is her destiny. The dining table and the wooden pane windows made a perfect empty shot against the night sky. A few hours ago this place was filled with guests and stories. At this moment, it has fallen from prosperity into a deep peace, just like the night in Beijing outside the window.

    She lamented: life, is the dinner table. The longest bond between a person and a person is just one life, and it is the memory of taste that catalyzes our bond with each other.

It's very relaxing to eat here. "At ease" means to be at ease. In religion, the word "at ease" has been given a deeper meaning: a mind free from worries and free from obstacles.

    Being at home in the earthly realm is the color realm, and we are at ease. We are at ease with ourselves in the world of color, and we are at ease with ourselves in the world of faith or in the world of emptiness, and you are at ease with yourself. The relationship between color and emptiness for us is both simple and complex, and at this moment, the Xiaowu family feast is a table of ease, how you want to be "at ease" is up to you.

    "A lot of restaurants are looking for decoration, tableware, ostentation, preoccupation. There is no getting away from the sense of ritual. These are just comparisons in the color world. They can't get away from'eyes, ears, nose and tongue'The four words, 'eyes and ears' are the environment of the dish, and 'nose and tongue' are the senses of smell and taste. My family feast has two more words than theirs, 'body' and 'mind'. 'Body' is the highest state of the feast - 'at ease'. The body and mind are in a state of telestiality, and any meal eaten is not good. Even the highest-end restaurants are still in the color world in comparison. I make a family feast by blending the six items of 'eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind' and wandering through the off worlds of color and emptiness. I want to leave others with more than just memories stuck in flavor."

   What is 'intention'? It is the thought that moves me the moment the food reaches my mouth. Connecting these six words together is "eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind", which is the content of the Heart Sutra, and the relationship between color and emptiness is even more of the essence of the Heart Sutra that must not be mentioned.

    There is a sense of multi-dimensionality to Xiao Wu's dining table. This feeling is due to the flavor but more than that, the bamboo mat tabletop seems to stretch wildly in time and space, with all the possibilities of what has passed, what has been, and what is about to happen. Just like that, without any choreography, the story about you appears automatically. When you feel at home, it's right.

    "People who come to my family dinner are relaxed and know what they're eating. At restaurants out there, a lot of people can't remember what dish they had. It's too much added value that makes you forget the flavor."

Watch the gathering and rising and falling of karma and the twisting of thoughts.

   "Each person at my table has their own karma and perhaps harbors some purpose. But none of that matters; the only significance to me is that they are all here to eat. Each one's mind was moving, and each thought was different from the next. I could see it with particular clarity. Some became friends with each other at my table and others stayed away from each other. I would watch the gathering and rising and falling of karma, and the thoughts twisted. In fact, reaching out to someone of value is an effective way to progress on your own, and attributing someone's worthiness or lack thereof entirely to forces is one-sided.The only way to meet a better version of yourself is to meet a better person. Every person I meet is a helping hand for progress, and I keep meeting my better self again!."

    At this point, Xiao Wu is eating her signature Brussels sprouts bibimbap and says that she is her own emperor, and that many people either overestimate or underestimate themselves because they always measure themselves against others' standards. Others are the territory, you are the emperor.

    At first, I saw that she must be a worldly person as she entertained guests every day, and gradually I learned about her thoughts and past. At the table we each held our own sprouts with noodles and talked as we ate, and she said, "Because we both must talk a lot, I can't make me noodles in soup, they'll get cold."

    "I17I met Venerable Jiqun at the age of 18, and I will always remember how relaxed we were when we first met and smiled at each other. Often, I would go to Venerable Master Jeet Kuneo's temple for spiritual retreats, and then I went there so intensively that I traveled back and forth between my home and the temple.7Years. In the Venerable Master's temple I realized that I was a useless person and no one needed me anymore. At first I could not read the sutras and found them boring and difficult to understand. But as time went on, what used to be difficult to understand would at some point become clear. In this7I read a lot of books during the year, I would read them over and over again, digging deeper and deeper. Zhou Guoping, Osho, Krishnamurti, because it was translated by Hu Yinmeng, I went back to Hu Yinmeng's book to read it, and because of Hu Yinmeng I learned about Dzongsar Rinpoche, and I was interested in these people and went back to their autobiographies. Director Yan Hao has been changing the script at my house, and through him I fell in love with Sanmao, and then some literary figures in Taiwan."

    Gradually, I understood the saying, "The Great Hidden in the City", that one can be at home in the hustle and bustle of the city because one's heart is far away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Hidden in the mountains is hidden. Wandering in the city is also hidden, and is a big hidden. See all the red dust and drama, still can put down is really understandable.

   "Confidence does not come from your money, your beauty, but from what you feel in your heart, all external influences cannot become your confidence. Only that which comes from within can become your unstoppable confidence, so we have to train our hearts to be strong."
I was always the last one to leave every family banquet, sometimes until midnight, and she would seriously teach me life lessons and spiritual depths that I had never heard before. I don't know if I'm lucky, but for me [Xiaowu's Feast] is no longer a feast.

    I picked up a slice of potato, swished it in the unique Guizhou dip, and brought up a few slices of bright green scallions. Because I had said that potatoes were the love of my life, she fried the slices and served me my greatest love.

[___Xiao Wu Family Feast]

    One should have a mind without dwelling, and not rest the pursuit in what one thinks is the true pursuit. Xiaowu met her husband at a family feast and resolved to keep the feast going. When she opened it, she realized that what she was pursuing was no longer stuck in the family feast. Once upon a time, she was obsessed with the feast, but now she has let go of this obsession, and although the feast goes on, its meaning is different.

   "I get a lot out of doing house parties, insights, learning, and talking. There will be highs and lows and differences when we are in the color world. There will be comparisons. I've seen high priests and masters I know what emptiness is, I've seen a lot of good things so I know what's good, I've seen so many people and things, my life is still stuck in comparison and progress, all I can say is that I'm still practicing in the red dust. People always demand better and more from themselves, and I am grateful to Venerable Master Jeet Kune Do, who will remind me of the meaning of the original mind with the heart of religion, so that I can be more peaceful and not deviate on the path of progress in life."

Venerable Master Jeet Kuneo said, "We can go slower on the right path."

Take your time, it's faster. Don't change direction easily but we can adjust the speed, no one can stay hyper forever, you can allow yourself to be lazy when you are in bad shape, don't be afraid to go slow as long as the road is right. Sometimes it's faster to take your time instead.

At this point, I finally understand why [Kobu's Family Feast] exists as a story.

    From the bustle of the day to the peace of the night, I watched her in the bustle of the fire and in the peace of the self-satisfied silence. The sun rose every day as usual, another Xiao Wu family feast. A few more stories from a city that has never been a stranger. The couple seated opposite expressed polite thanks to Kobu.

 Takeshi said, "I didn't do anything, I just made you guys a meal.

  [Xiaowu Family Feast] Signature small dish: diving kimchi.

The ingredients are simple but have a lot to offer, the water used for diving is special Guizhou Maotai, the taste is very unique.