Essay: 学切菜 – Learning to Cut Vegetables

Learning to Cut Vegetables

Last year, I came to China to learn how to cook. I have always loved Chinese food, so I was very happy.

On the first day, the teacher didn’t let us cook. He gave each of us a knife and a lot of vegetables, then said: ‘Today, you will only learn one thing—how to cut vegetables.’

I was a little disappointed. Cutting vegetables? I had cut vegetables at home before, what’s so hard about that?

But I was wrong. When the teacher cut vegetables, he was both fast and skilled, and every piece was the same size. And mine? The big ones were big, the small ones were small, and I was very slow. The teacher looked at the vegetables I had cut, smiled, and said: ‘You need to practice more.’

From that day on, I cut vegetables every day. Cutting potatoes, cutting vegetables, cutting meat. At first my hand hurt a lot, but later it slowly got better.

A month later, when I looked again at the vegetables I had cut, every piece was almost the same size. The teacher walked over, took a look, nodded and said: ‘Good, now you can start learning to cook.’

At that moment, I was especially happy. It turns out that doing a small thing well isn’t easy either.