Communal kitchen gives migrants ‘taste’ of home
Eating her favorite dishes from home was once a luxury for Wang Xiuqiong, a migrant worker at a construction site in Xiamen, southeast China’s Fujian Province, because she had no private kitchen and workers are not allowed to cook in their dorms due to fire risks.
Last August, the project contractor on Wang’s construction site set up a communal kitchen, where workers can cook meals and satisfy their cravings for comfort foods from home.
Wang booked the kitchen in advance via messaging app WeChat and invited some of her fellow workers to dinner. The group has arranged monthly gatherings to cook and eat their hometown favorites.
Her guests all migrated to Xiamen from southwestern Sichuan Province for better pay and work as security guards, sanitation workers or construction workers. Most of them live in dorms and lack a private space to cook or get together.
A year ago, they may have eaten, drunk and gossiped at a nearby restaurant. Now, it is a different story.
The 18-square-meter room contains a gas stove, two kitchen sinks with running water, vegetable oil and four bottles of common condiments: salt, chicken stock, soy sauce, and vinegar, all of which are provided free of charge.
Wang purchased meat and vegetables at the supermarket at noon. Like the gathering in the previous month, Sichuan cuisine was her first choice to treat her hometown friends.
“Sichuan bean paste is a necessity to make twice-cooked pork. I brought two bottles to the construction site when I returned after the Spring Festival, along with Sichuan spicy sausage,” said Wang, 43.
After two hours of cooking, six dishes sat on the table. The dishes flavored with red peppers looked delicious to the Sichuan natives. Wang’s husband also purchased some beer for the gathering.
The couple have been working at construction sites for more than 20 years. They moved to Xiamen four years ago. Her husband is an electrician, while she works as a chef at the construction site canteen which provides discounted meals for workers.
Wang loves the communal kitchen idea. “It saves us a lot of money and provides migrant workers with a place to cook dishes from their hometown and eat together,” she said.
The dinner cost the couple around 60 yuan (US$9.4), less than one-third of the cost of eating at a restaurant.
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