Mary Li Sia was an unusual woman.
Not unusual in that she wrote a Chinese cookbook in English; the Chinese were among the first and most prolific of cookbook writers here.
Rather, she was unusual in that her book, "Mary Sia’s Classic Chinese Cookbook," sold steadily through three editions.
The only hiatus was between 1998, when Sia’s family acquired the rights back from the University of Hawai‘i Press, and now. UH Press called last year to ask, "Wouldn’t you like to do a new edition?" The family said, "Yes!"
Unlike the 1957 original, the new fourth edition is perfect-bound (bound with adhesive at the spine instead of spiral-bound) and has been equipped with a new introduction by food historian Rachel Laudan, a family preface by Sia’s daughter, and a new glossary of Chinese ingredients.
Though her recipes are a simple compendium of common Chinese home dishes — mostly Cantonese in origin but some northern Chinese — the book is more polished than many, with a detailed index and specific instructions.
"In those days, when she was writing and teaching, nobody measured; they just cooked by feel," recalled her daughter, Julia Sia Ing.
But Sia was a home economics graduate and knew the importance of making no assumptions. She had taught so many novices, through YWCA classes, Narcissus Festival demonstrations and other avenues, that she knew what techniques needed to be carefully explained.
She cooked with Julia Child on one occasion, and Danny Kaye, too.
Sia, who died in 1971 at age 71, was unusual, too, for her unquenchable energy: She was not only a writer and teacher of Chinese cooking; she was a musician, playing the organ at church, accompanying her husband, who liked to sing, on the piano and teaching piano.
During World War II she gathered up Chinese clothing from her own wardrobe and that of friends and gave cultural fashion shows for USO audiences.
She was athletic and a passionate tennis player, winning matches in mixed doubles with her husband. (He is said to have first noticed her for her athletic abilities, throwing a ball farther than any other girl at a meeting organized by a Chinese Christian association on the mainland. They were engaged in five days and married a month and a half later.)
Sia spoke English, Cantonese, Mandarin and the Hakka dialect.
In 1964 she was named United Chinese Society of Hawai‘i Model Mother of the Year.
"She was the busiest lady I ever knew," Ing said. "She had so many interests. She was full of ideas."
Sia was among the first cooking teachers not just to lecture a class, but to take her students to Chinatown to show them how to shop, ending with lunch at the famed Wo Fat restaurant.
Sia grew up in Hawaii, the third of nine children, before moving to Beijing after her 1924 wedding to Richard Sia, a medical teacher and researcher. There he worked at Union Medical College, and they had three children and a houseful of servants. But, predictably, Sia didn’t just remain decoratively indoors.
Despite the great divide between members of the Western diplomatic community in Beijing and members of the Chinese community, Laudan writes, Sia began taking foreigners on tours of Chinese markets and, in 1935, wrote her first book, "Chinese Chopsticks," a groundbreaking English-language guide to Chinese food ways and Beijing restaurants, with recipes.
In 1939, after the Japanese invasion of China, the Sias decided to return to Hawaii, where Sia’s many-faceted career blossomed. She helped write a benefit cookbook for the Chinese Committee of the International Institute of the YWCA, with proceeds going to war-torn China.
She taught Chinese cooking at UH, McKinley High School and for the YWCA.
It was one of her students, UH history professor Arthur J. Marder, who suggested to UH Press that they ought to publish a collection of her recipes. Marder wrote the original foreword, which is retained in the fourth edition.
To thisday, Ing meets people who took Sia’s classes and remember them well. She recalled a time when Sia taught at the Blaisdell Concert Hall to a standing-room-only crowd.
Ing believes a big part of her mother’s popularity was not only that her recipes were simple and really worked, but that she was a natural storyteller who shared rich memories of her life in China. She also had a great sense of humor.
Sia could be exacting, too. One woman told Ing she still blushes about an incident when the class made a particular dish and Sia praised one effort with, "THIS is the way to do it," then turned to the woman’s contribution and said, "This is NOT the way to do it."
"There are just constant reminders of my mother," she said. Always clad in her trademark cheongsam, Sia was chronicled in the local newspapers repeatedly, especially around Chinese New Year.
Her granddaughter Laura Baker recalls that Sia so loved to cook for her family that "she would have brought dinner over every night if we had let her."
Sia did all the shopping and prep for her own classes, though she didn’t drive and had to be chauffeured about by family members.
"She would try dishes on us," Baker said. "I remember one time she brought a steamed cake, and we were so full from dinner that we didn’t eat much. She thought we didn’t like it, so she never made it again."
On the other hand, her sweet-and-sour fishcake was a perennial favorite among the grandchildren (she had nine, of which seven lived in Hawaii). The dish, which is in the book, starts with Chinese fishcake (a sort of grayish paste available in Chinese markets) blended with roast pork and ham, vegetables and a little pineapple, then fried and topped with sweet-sour sauce made with pineapple juice.
Baker laughed as she remembered how her mother had a special company menu that she liked to trot out when they entertained: sweet-and-sour shrimp, cold ginger chicken, char siu ribs, fried won tons, shrimp toast and so on. But Ing rarely got to prepare the meal herself; Sia would always show up to "help." Once, her mother moaned, "I wanted to do it myself."
Sia’s final gift to her grandchildren was a cooking class for the growing brood, their cousins and friends. Sia died when Baker was in her first year of college, but her grandmother’s memory is as fresh for her as it is for many of her aging students.
Said Baker, "We loved her teaching. We still talk about it." And they still consult her cookbook, as so many others do.
