Cooking convenience for cancer patients

Relatives of cancer patients cook meals for their hospitalized relatives at the ‘kitchen of love’ in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. (China daily)

Wan Zuocheng, 70, starts his day at 4am.

The first thing he does after going downstairs is to light a dozen stoves and get his boiler going. He boils a large amount of water every day to help the families of cancer patients with cooking.

Knowing that patients generally have a poor appetite after chemotherapy, he also prepares many pots of porridge.

His wife, 68-year-old Xiong Gengxiang, takes care of cooking rice. She cooks more than 10 pots of rice a day. At 9 a.m., the couple welcomes their first group of customers and continues to serve until the last customer leaves around 8 or 9 p.m.

The special kitchen is located in Qingshan Lake District in Nanchang, East China’s Jiangxi Province, right next to Jiangxi Cancer Hospital. Over the past two decades, it has become widely known as the “anti-cancer kitchen” because it provides inpatients and their families with a convenient place to prepare meals.

The couple makes the use of their stoves and kitchenware available to the public at a very low price: just 1 yuan ($15 cents).

The kitchen was originally a breakfast stall that Wan and Xiong operated. They used to cook youtiao, or fried dough sticks, which were famous in the area.

One day in 2003, a young couple came by and asked if they could use the stove to cook dinner for their son. The boy, then a teenager, was suffering from bone cancer. He wanted to eat his mother’s cooking while he was in the hospital.

Wan and Xiong let the young mother use their stove for free. They later offered the use of the stove and their utensils free of charge to other families who wanted to prepare meals for their hospitalized relatives.

As news of the couple’s act spread, people who had used their kitchen started calling the stall “anti-cancer kitchen”. Some even started calling it “kitchen of love,” which made them feel warm.

To allow more people to cook at the same time, Wan and Xiong bought more stoves and utensils and turned their small stall into a bigger kitchen.

“Everyone who comes here to cook has a family member suffering from cancer,” Wan said. “Patients always want to eat meals prepared by their family members, so (running the kitchen) is a great thing for us.”

A Chinese road sign reading “kitchen of love” on a street near the kitchen in Nanchang. (China daily)

To cover basic costs, the couple initially charged only 0.5 yuan for cooking, but eventually increased the price to 1 yuan in 2016.

Fan, a relative of a cancer patient in the hospital, has prepared more than fifty dishes in the communal kitchen. “I heard about this place through other families of patients,” said Fan, who is from the neighboring city of Jiujiang and brought his family to Nanchang for treatment. “I made eel soup here, because you can’t buy it anywhere else.”

There are many people like Fan who use this facility to prepare food for their sick loved ones. The ‘kitchen of love’ annually accommodates more than 10,000 people who come to cook meals.

In February 2021, Wan and Xiong received the 2020 Touching China Award, an annual award that recognizes the country’s most inspiring role models in various aspects. Later that year, in November, they were also called “National Moral Models”.

When asked about their motivation for doing this, Wan said, “I want to help. I am willing to do it, and I will continue to do it as long as I can.”

Despite rising costs for rent and utility bills, the couple said they will continue to persevere.

“We don’t do it for money. We do it because it gives us a sense of satisfaction,” Xiong added.

(Source: China Daily)