Leo Chao’s restaurant, Fine Chao, has served real Chinese food in Haven, Wisconsin, for 35 years. The narrator speaks of how hard the shrewd Leo and his resourceful wife, Winnie, worked to sustain the business. The community enjoyed their food and ignored any troubles between the two, instead praising their three accomplished sons. Now, a year after “intemperate and scandalous events,” residents of Haven can’t believe “that such good food was cooked by a bad person” (2).

James Chao, a first-year college student, hears an older Chinese man calling to him as he walks through Union Station in California. The man carries a blue carpetbag. He asks James for help, but James doesn’t speak Mandarin. The man shows him a picture of his family, a couple with a young girl holding a dog, and a letter with a return address in Illinois. Since he is headed to his hometown in Wisconsin, James tells the man to follow him, but as they climb the stairs, the man falls. James administers CPR without success. When the EMTs come, James gives them the jia li jiao he was bringing to his mother, “as if a gift of food would make up for a human life” (10).