I am standing in the kitchen like a morally bankrupt woodland creature in human clothing.

I am under ninety pounds of allegedly adult responsibility. I am an anorexic-looking hobbit with the appetite of a dockworker and the self-control of a raccoon that has discovered Costco. My collarbones are out here auditioning for a Tim Burton film. My wrists are parentheses. And yet—inside this skeletal cosplay—lives a furnace. A greedy, bourbon-fed, salt-craving dragon. This process feels like a quiet act of love, inviting the audience to feel the care behind each step.

And today, the dragon smells something.

The box sits on the counter like a sacred relic. The typography whispers in dignified Traditional Chinese: Lao Xie Zhen’s “Huo Tong Chicken Soup“. The numbers on the box shine like the word of God: 2440 grams of fate. 940 grams of solid substance. Twelve months of shelf life. One whole chicken, resting in its broth like a king in a hot spring.

I am already sweating.

My mother is in the other room, humming to herself, oblivious to the fact that I have begun my villain phase.

I reach out and touch the box. It is cool. Respectably cool. The kind of cool that implies corporate temperature management systems. I picture thermodynamics monks in New Taipei City fine-tuning heat curves with the skill of NASA engineers. A thermometer somewhere is shedding tears of pride.

I peel it open.

The first hiss is not a hiss. It is a sigh. A long, ancestral exhale of poultry history.

Steam rises in a spectral column.

And I am undone.

The smell hits me like a velvet hammer.

Not just chicken. No, this is not cafeteria poultry. This is not rotisserie parking lot temptation. This is a broth that has been to therapy. A broth that has read poetry. A broth that has seen war and come back quieter.

Water. Chicken. Pork knuckle. Pork bone. Pork. Shiitake. Jinhua ham. Ginger. Iodized salt. White pepper. Sugar.

It is a choir. A porcine-poultry symphony conducted by an old master with a ladle instead of a baton.

I am trembling.

My stomach, previously pretending to be a polite Victorian orphan, is now banging on the walls like a prison riot. I can feel the alcohol from last night still ghosting through my bloodstream, whispering, “Feed me grease. Feed me salt. Feed me forgiveness.”

I pour the soup into a pot.

The liquid cascades out in slow motion—amber, slightly opalescent, shimmering with fat that catches the kitchen light like stained glass in a cathedral dedicated to sodium.

The chicken slides out whole.

Whole.

It lands in the pot with a dignified, ceremonial slump. The skin is pale gold, stretched taut yet delicate, like the surface of a drum that has been tuned to the key of umami.

I stare at it.

It stares back.

We understand each other.

Temperature control.

I become a thermaniac. Thermo-maniac? Thermomaniac? Whatever it is, I am now that.

I do not simply heat this soup.

I curate its ascent to glory.

The flame goes on low. Not medium. Not reckless. Low. Controlled. Respectful. I am whispering to the pot. “Easy. Easy. We’re not savages.” This careful attention to temperature reflects a reverence for the food, encouraging the audience to feel the importance of patience and respect in cooking.

Because here’s the thing—this chicken has structure. The meat is firm in a way that suggests some secret alchemy. Not rubbery. Not dry. Firm like a handshake from someone who owns land. The muscle fibres hold themselves together with quiet confidence.

And yet the cartilage—oh, the cartilage.

I press gently at a joint with my chopsticks.

It trembles.

It is fall-off-the-bone tender. It is the kind of tender that makes you rethink your life choices. The kind of tender that says, “You could be softer too, you know.”

How do they do this?

What arcane temperature sorcery allows flesh to remain structured while cartilage dissolves into gelatinous confession?

They must simmer it at a threshold where collagen unwinds, but muscle fibres do not seize. They must hover in that liminal thermal purgatory—just below violence, just above lukewarm mediocrity.

I hover over the pot like a deranged scientist, face inches from the steam.

The broth quivers. Tiny convection currents dance on the surface. Beads of fat meander lazily, refracting light like an oil slick rainbow.

I take up a spoon.

It’s too hot.

Good.

I want it hot enough to be dangerous. I want it to hover just short of scalding, but not quite enough to land me in a lawsuit. I want my lips to prickle. I want my tongue to negotiate a treaty with the heat.

Because heat is not just a physics thing. Heat is emotion. Heat is drama. Heat is pacing.

Too cool, and the fat becomes a waxy lie.

Too hot, and the sweet undertone of pork bone gets relegated to the background.

So I am there, adjusting the flame in infinitesimal increments, as if I were defusing a bomb made of chicken.

Click. A little lower.

Pause.

Observe.

Steam rises in thicker plumes now, curling like calligraphy in the air. My glasses fog. My heartbeat syncs with the gentle bubbling.

I am sweating through my T-shirt.

I am in love.

My mother calls from the other room, “Is it ready?”

Ready?

Is Michelangelo ready halfway through the Sistine Chapel?

Is the sun ready at dawn?

I do not answer.

Because I am already ladling.

The first bowl is obscene.

A whole chicken thigh, glistening, emerges from the broth like a mythological beast from a hot spring. The skin jiggles with dignified restraint. I pour broth over it, watching the liquid cascade down its curves, pooling at the bottom of the bowl in amber serenity.

The aroma intensifies. Ginger lifts its bright, nasal clarity. White pepper whispers at the back of my throat before I even taste it. Shiitake hums in bass notes. The Jinhua ham threads through everything like a smoky silk scarf.

I bring the bowl to the table.

I do not wait.

I never wait.

I sit.

I stare.

I take the first sip.

It is lava.

It is controlled lava.

The heat hits my lips first—a sharp, immediate awareness. My lower lip tingles. I inhale through my nose to cool the incoming tide. The broth floods my mouth and—

Time stops.

The salt arrives first, not aggressive, but authoritative. Then sweetness—subtle, like someone smiling from across a room. Then depth. The pork bones have given themselves fully to this liquid. There is marrow memory in here. There is time.

The alcohol ghost in my bloodstream recoils, then melts.

My stomach roars approval.

I swallow.

The heat travels down my throat like a comet. I can feel it bloom in my chest. It spreads outward, radiating into my ribcage, warming the cavernous architecture of my underweight torso.

I take another sip.

And another.

And now I am not sipping.

I am inhaling.

The meat.

I grip the thigh with chopsticks and pull.

The skin stretches, then yields. The meat beneath is pale, moist, and structured. It resists just enough to feel alive. My teeth sink in.

Firm.

But not stubborn.

The fibres part easily, without shredding into a mess. There is honour in this. A tensile strength that implies a thermal dance of precision.

And then I come to the joint.

The cartilage yields to the slightest pressure. It melts into a gelatinous nirvana. It coats my lips. It slips effortlessly across my tongue.

I chew.

There is no chew.

It simply surrenders.

I laugh.

Out loud.

Alone.

I look around guiltily, but my mother is still in the other room, probably setting the table, unaware that I have already declared war on the entire pot.

Emotion floods me.

Shame? A little.

Greed? Absolutely.

Euphoria? Off the charts.

There is something profoundly indecent about being this small and eating this much. I look down at my bird-like wrists gripping a bowl the size of my torso and think, “This is not proportionate.”

And yet.

I am unstoppable.

I go back to the pot.

I lift the lid.

Steam punches me in the face like a humid blessing.

The whole chicken is still there—technically. But now it looks vulnerable. Sections missing. Limbs displaced. I have already begun dismantling it like a tiny, deranged anatomist.

I scoop more.

Broth sloshes over the rim of the ladle. I don’t care. It drips onto the stove. I will clean later. Or I won’t. Future Me can deal with it.

I am in the present continuous tense of gluttony.

I am eating.

I am devouring.

I am transcending.

The second bowl is hotter.

Because the longer it simmers, the more the flavours meld. The fat emulsifies. The aroma ripens. I swear that the soup is getting smarter by the minute.

I check the temperature obsessively.

I blow on it, timing myself.

One.

Two.

Sip.

Still too hot.

Good.

I like the edge.

I like the slight pain.

It makes me feel alive. It makes the pleasure sharper.

The white pepper blooms in the back of my throat, a gentle heat distinct from the thermal heat. Dual flames—one chemical, one physical.

I am sweating now in earnest.

My nose runs.

I wipe it with the back of my hand like a barbarian.

I tear into a wing.

The bone slides out clean.

Clean.

Like the meat and bone had signed a mutual separation agreement.

I hold up the bone, naked and shining, and feel a rush of pride that is utterly, laughably out of proportion to the accomplishment.

My mother’s footsteps come near.

Panic.

I look at the pot.

Half empty.

Half.

I think about lying.

I think about attributing it to evaporation.

I think about the dog we don’t own.

But then the soup re-enters my bloodstream, and I find myself bereft of the ability to deceive.

She enters.

She stops.

She looks at the table.

She looks at me.

She looks at the pot.

I am mid-chew, mouth full, eyes wild.

There is a silence.

I swallow.

“Temperature control is perfect,” I say, as if this is an adequate explanation.

She sighs.

I grin sheepishly, lips slick with collagen.

She shakes her head, but she is smiling.

She scoops herself a small bowlful.

Small.

Pathetic.

I feel a twinge of guilt.

I push the pot slightly toward her.

But my hand lingers.

Because I am not done.

By the third bowl, I am in a trance.

The broth is now at peak thermodynamic nirvana. Not aggressively boiling. Not languid. Just a steady, confident simmer that keeps everything in suspension.

I am hyper-aware of temperature gradients.

The top layer is slightly cooler.

The depths are still volcanic.

I stir deliberately to evenly redistribute the heat. I want uniformity. I want every sip to be calibrated.

I am a thermomaniac with a ladle.

The chicken breast—often the driest, most disappointing part in lesser soups—is shockingly supple. It holds shape, yes, but it yields gracefully. No chalkiness. No fibre squeak. Just damp, textured tenderness.

How.

How.

What temperature curve did they use in the pre-cooking? How long did they hold it at that collagen unwinding point? Did they rest it? Did they shock it? Did they whisper affirmations to it?

I do not know.

I only know that I am now scraping the pot with the fervour of a gold miner in 1849.

Emotionally, I am oscillating.

Elation.

Greed.

A faint existential dread.

Because as the broth level drops, so too does my illusion of infinite abundance.

The chicken carcass emerges more fully now, skeletal, picked clean in places. I feel a strange kinship with it. Two bony beings, one nourished, one sacrificed.

I scoop the last substantial piece of thigh meat.

I hesitate.

Should I leave this for my mother?

I glance at her bowl.

She is eating slowly. Politely. Like a civilized person.

I am not civilized.

I am a 90-pound anomaly powered by sodium and poor decisions.

I eat it.

The final sips are the most intense.

The broth, reduced slightly from simmering, is more concentrated now. The flavours have tightened. The salt is sharper. The umami is deeper.

It coats my mouth in a glossy film of satisfaction.

I tilt the bowl back.

I do not care that this is unbecoming.

Nor do I care if I look like a Victorian orphan who has discovered gravy for the first time.

I drink.

Every drop.

The heat slides down my throat one last time, settling in my stomach like a benevolent sun.

I exhale.

Long.

Slow.

Reverent.

The pot is nearly empty.

A few lonely bones.

A shallow pool of amber.

My mother looks at me, half exasperated, half amused.

“You’re under ninety pounds,” she says.

“I’m thermodynamically efficient,” I reply.

She laughs.

I lean back in my chair, hands on my distended, hobbit-sized abdomen. I feel warmth radiating outward. My fingers are slightly pruned from the steam. My face is flushed. My soul is quiet.

I think about the label.

“Lao Xie Zhen.”

Twelve months of shelf life.

But in this house?

Twelve minutes.

I think of the precise temperature control that made it possible for firm meat and melted cartilage to coexist. I think of the flavour engineers who worked to balance the richness of pork bones with the brightness of ginger. I think of the unseen hands that simmered this into being.

And I, tiny and unassuming, have demolished it like a mythological creature disguised as a malnourished librarian.

Do I regret it?

No.

I am still tasting it on my lips. The white pepper hum. The collagen gloss. The echo of Jinhua ham.

I am sitting here, present and continuing, digesting.

I am warm.

I am full.

I am shameless.

I am already wondering when we can buy it again.

Because somewhere in New Taipei City, in a facility on Zhongshan Road, someone is calibrating a kettle to that perfect, sacred temperature.

And I—

I am waiting.

Hungry.

Always hungry.

I Weigh Less Than 90lbs. Lao Xie Zhen Taiwan’s Popular CNY Dish, “Huo Tong Chicken Soup, ” Makes Me Devour 2.4kg of Whole Chicken Soup ‘Liquid Gold’ in One Sitting