Asian-American mother challenges tough Chinese traditions for new mums with modern recipes

When Taiwanese-American journalist and cookbook author Clarissa Wei gave birth to her first child three years ago, she did everything “right” – at least by Taiwanese post-partum care standards. She checked into a dedicated confinement centre, expecting a month of nourishing herbal soups, expert recovery advice and the kind of rest that Chinese tradition has prescribed new mothers for centuries. Instead, she felt lost. “To be honest, the food wasn’t great,” Wei says. “I developed post-partum anxiety because I was just confused; no one explained anything to me. It felt like a quarantine hotel, and I felt quite alone.” That experience, combined with the recent birth of her second child, became the unlikely genesis of her new cookbook, Sitting the Month: Postpartum Recipes for Rest & Recovery, which will be released in September. A restful tradition “Sitting the month” is the literal translation of zuo yue zi, the traditional Chinese practice of post-partum confinement that lasts anywhere between 30 and 100 days. It is a period of intensive recovery following childbirth, in which new mothers are expected to stay indoors, rest, keep warm and eat specific warming foods – think chicken soup with ginger and sesame oil – to restore qi (vital energy) and blood. In Taiwan, as well as in many places across East Asia, the practice has spawned an entire industry: confinement centres, specialised meal delivery services and certified post-partum nannies. When Wei interviewed an obstetrician-gynaecologist from the United States, she was told that post-partum care is not a large part of their training and that “it’s not necessarily valued in the West. It is in the East.” But Wei feels that the stronger emphasis on post-partum care can sometimes come across as rigid and fear-based. “I feel like, especially our generation, we grow up with our grandparents and mom being like, ‘If you don’t do your sitting the month right, you will mess up your body for the rest of your life,’” Wei says. “There’s a lot of fearmongering.” Wei’s anxiety only increased the first time she stayed at a confinement centre. “They were serving me things, but no one was explaining to me why I was eating them. I was expected to just listen to them and conform to a system that was supposed to be for my benefit, but I had no idea how or why,” she says. The food arrived from a third-party kitchen, often lukewarm and overcooked, and it “always needed a lot of salt”. Breakfast might be a neighbourhood dan bing, or rolled egg crepe. Soups came with bones but little flavour. The congee was plain white rice served with sides. That experience, Wei says, became a major motivation for writing Sitting the Month. “If more people understood the philosophy behind this month and realised that it’s actually not that difficult to make the food yourself, there would be less intimidation around it,” she says. Dismantling misconceptions For her second pregnancy, Wei decided to do things differently. Armed with two and a half years of research – including interviews with herbalists, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners and Western obstetrician-gynaecologists – she opted to recover at home. “Now, as a second-time mom, I have the confidence I built up as a mother,” Wei says. “And after doing all my research for the book, I have a better idea of what to eat for recovery. “From a food perspective, I feel way more nourished. And the recipes are not as stringent as one would think.” One of the biggest misconceptions Wei wants to dismantle is that confinement food must be extreme. “The stereotype is that after birth, you’re just eating chicken cooked in rice wine and ginger, no water, for 30 days straight,” she says, referring to the TCM concept that categorises foods based on the types of energies they create in the body. In Chinese culture, women’s bodies post-partum are believed to be deficient in yang energy, requiring “heating” foods to restore balance. “I’ve talked to people who actually did that, and most professional post-partum providers these days do not recommend it. It’s too hot on the body, too intense,” Wei says. Historically, cooking soups entirely in rice wine made sense from a sanitation perspective. “If you lived in the countryside of China and there wasn’t access to clean running water, rice wine was a sure-fire way to make sure you’re not getting infected,” Wei says, adding that today the practice feels out of touch. “No one wants to drink soup with a whole chicken boiled only in rice wine. My recipes aren’t your grandmother’s recipes. The industry is evolving and adapting to the modern mom,” she says. The recipes in Wei’s book reflect a contemporary, balanced approach. The book’s cover photo is of a gingery chicken congee with goji berries – a holistic, one-bowl meal she developed after being served plain white rice at her confinement centre. Another stand-out is a cordyceps chicken soup Wei developed with her herbalist collaborators. “Cordyceps intimidate people because they think of zombie worms,” Wei laughs. “But the one used for post-partum is a mushroom. It’s like having a mushroom with your chicken soup, flavoured with black dates.” The result, Wei says, is “smoky and sweet”, with a hint of the plum-drink aroma found in Taiwanese restaurants. Wei’s personal sleeper hit is a tea made from roasted eucommia bark – which she describes as “smoky, marshmallowy, sweet” – blended with black soybeans, goji berries and jujubes. Eucommia bark is traditionally used for back pain, a near-universal complaint among new mothers as their body “knits itself back together”. “I had no idea what it was until I wrote this book. I hope that’s something that makes it into the rotation more in the Western diet,” Wei says. Wei’s book takes a simpler, modernised approach to traditional Chinese foods and herbs while being careful not to overpromise on TCM’s efficacy. “I don’t use TCM terms throughout. I won’t say ‘this helps the spleen’ or ‘helps the liver’, because I don’t understand that language and I’m not a trained practitioner,” she says. Instead, she hired a TCM doctor who works at a hospital in Taiwan to annotate the recipes in plain terms: “Doctor’s notes: this may help you sleep.” ‘It takes more than a village’ Wei’s overarching philosophy is as follows: “It can take a woman up to two years to feel completely recovered. You just spent nine months growing and birthing a human. That warrants a lot of care.” That said, she is also candid about the less progressive origins of the “sitting the month” tradition. One of the book’s essays explores traditional superstitions behind confinement: “If you went outside, you would be cursing your community. A woman’s blood after birth was considered to be unclean – it would curse people who were near it.” Wei says that her book is about “destigmatising” the condition of new mothers while preserving what works: rest, warmth and nourishment. “A lot of this confinement, staying away from everyone, comes from old beliefs that are misunderstood or misinterpreted,” she says. She is equally keen to dispel the notion that zuo yue zi has to mean total deprivation, and admits she does not subsist solely on herbal soups for the full month. “I’ll go out and have pizza or, you know, maybe have a glass of wine.” For Wei, the key is understanding the reasoning behind the traditional restrictions while figuring out what works for individuals. “I think it’s finding balance – understanding why you’re doing certain things and why you’re avoiding certain things. Then you can make the decisions for yourself,” she says. She argues that a sense of agency is often missing in Confucian-influenced cultures, where younger generations are expected to obey elders without question. By demystifying the “why” behind each taboo, Wei aims to replace blind obedience with informed confidence. “Moms will feel more confident that they’re making the best decisions for themselves and for their bodies,” she says. Wei hopes the recipes will be used not only by new mothers but by their partners, friends and post-partum doulas. “If this were my first baby, I would not be at home. I would still go to a centre or hire a nanny because it’s very, very overwhelming. “My hope is that people will buy the book for their friend who’s giving birth and bring a soup over. It takes more than a village. You can’t do this by yourself.”

Asian-American mother challenges tough Chinese traditions for new mums with modern recipes

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Clarissa Wei’s cookbook ‘Sitting the Month’ puts a modern spin on the traditional Chinese foods typically given to post-partum mothers

A restful tradition

Clarissa Wei’s cookbook ‘Sitting the Month’ puts a modern spin on the traditional Chinese foods typically given to post-partum mothers