The Sandwich

Yi looks back on the lunch staple that marked her first meal in America, and served as something of a rite of passage.

Juanmonino via Getty Images

I pushed open the heavy double door and stepped out of Selleck quadrangle, the graduate housing at University of Nebraska - Lincoln. The frigid January air entered my nostrils and instantly froze the hair inside. What a strange sensation! I was amused but mostly glad about the clear-headed way the cold air made me feel. The past 48 hours had been a blur. It was impossible to fit hours into days since I boarded the flight at Shanghai Hong Qiao airport, my first international trip and my third time ever leaving the city I grew up in. The long hours in the air were accompanied by nerve-wracking chaos in San Francisco and Denver airports: Immigration, Customs, transfers between terminals, before finally arriving in Lincoln’s tiny and bizarrely quiet airport.

Outside the terminal, it was already dark. I felt like I’d been through one strangely long day. Time zone was a concept I had not yet wrapped my head around. China has always had just one time zone, the Beijing Standard Time, although the country covers approximately the same longitudinal degrees as the United States. My kind professor picked me up and drove me to my assigned dorm: Selleck.

The first task to be completed on my first official day in the United States was to find myself something to eat in this city that would become my new home. I could not remember when I last ate, and I intended to treat myself with a proper meal.

There, the fast-spoken resident assistant had already changed into her comfortable pajamas. She gave me a quick welcome tour before showing me to my room. Handing me a blanket and bed sheet, she started heading out the door, a bit too anxiously. “Oh, by the way,” she said, turning just before exiting the room, “the cafeteria is closed until classes start, which is one week from today.” She smiled, and disappeared behind the door. I was too tired to make any real meaning out of that matter-of-fact statement and just went straight to bed. Twelve hours later I woke up, stomach growling.

The first task to be completed on my first official day in the United States was to find myself something to eat in this city that would become my new home. I could not remember when I last ate, and I intended to treat myself with a proper meal.

Despite growing up in a big city, I was (and still am) horrible with directions. Any destination that required more than a few turns never failed to confuse me on the return route. I was determined not to get lost on my first day in Lincoln, a city covering roughly 100 square miles, with just over 192,000 in population (according to the 1990 census report, taken a year after my arrival). That was about 1/20th the size of Shanghai, with less than 1/100th of the population. Standing at the front door of Selleck’s building E, the largest wing in the quadrangle, I made a mental note: if I just walked straight and never made a turn, it would be impossible to get lost! I pulled the zipper all the way up on my hideously bulky pink down coat (the only evidence that I had prepared for the cold Midwest winter), turned to my left and marched on, heels clicking on the sidewalk.

Lincoln was a university town and Selleck was conveniently situated in the center of the downtown campus, which obviously was still in winter break mode. The streets were quiet with few pedestrians. Along the street there were a few university buildings, and what appeared to be a bookstore, with its large windows decorated heavily in the color red, previewing the upcoming celebratory mood in the still quiet street. I found out later that red was the color of the university’s famous football team, with its renowned team spirit: “Go Big Red!”

My mind wandered back to a story my mom told when I first learned about sandwiches….Lured by the smell of freshly baked bread, she would sometimes skip breakfast so that she could use the extra 25 cents to get a baguette with ham for lunch.

In Chinese culture, red is often associated with celebration and loud noises. I would also find out later that the football team’s color fit well with noises from shouting and chanting the Husker’s theme song. Passing the big red bookstore, I came up to the first intersection, one that suggested much commercial activity, and an Episcopal church sitting on the far corner. I stopped and carefully studied the unfamiliar small shops lining the street, one named Kinko’s, and next to it, a store marked by a Sandwich and Soup sign above the window. My heart almost skipped a beat. A proper place for a proper meal! I hurried across the street and pulled open the door.

The warm air inside immediately enveloped me. Standing by the door I surveyed the store— a small shop with only a few tables by the windows looking out to the street. At the back, it had an eating counter with bar stools. In the middle of the counter, was a glass case displaying unfamiliar looking food items. The place wasn’t crowded, but the tables were all already occupied. I started to feel a bit uneasy.

“Good morning!” A slightly-heavy-set girl behind the counter greeted me in a happy voice. “Cold, isn’t it?” I wasn’t quite sure if she meant it rhetorically, but it came with a smile, so I smiled back and nodded with agreement. “What can I get you today?” She gestured at the blackboard on the wall, which listed menu items in fancy cursive handwriting, too fancy for me to read when someone was waiting for my answer. Rising inside me, anxiety started to replace uneasiness.

“Um … a sandwich?” I said tentatively, thinking I could not go wrong ordering a sandwich in a shop that proudly displayed a Sandwich and Soup sign.

“Sure hon! What kind of sandwich?” She again gestured to the blackboard, still smiling warmly. I nervously searched the board, trying to latch on to something familiar but somehow the words were not making sense for me.

“What kind of sandwiches do you have?” Now I was fishing. Her smile faded a little and she started to recite a list of what would be names of sandwiches. The names did not sound any more familiar than the words in fancy script on the board, but two words jumped out at the end of that long list: ham and cheese. “Ah yes! A ham and cheese sandwich, please!” I was relieved.

“Okay. What type of cheese?” Wait, cheese had different types? I never knew that. I had always thought cheese was just cheese.

“Hm, what types of cheeses do you have?” I asked, shamelessly repeating the same trick. The woman delivered another long list but this time, both the smile and the happy tone had disappeared. Her face turned expressionless, but I could almost hear her annoyance. I was getting desperate with each of the unfamiliar name of cheese she uttered, until the word American popped out.

“American cheese it is!” I grasped it while the sound of it was still mid-air.

In hindsight, it was a turning point of my attitude toward challenges, big or small, in my new life, as if procuring a proper first meal signified my will to survive in this new world I’d entered. That significance would only become obvious to me many years later.

“On what bread?” The way she asked her next question made me feel she was now anticipating drawing another blank from me. I started to contemplate whether I should just turn around and leave before this little scene drew attention from everyone in the shop. Or, would a sudden escape scene look more ridiculous than looking pathetically out of place, I wondered? It was just then that something amazingly happened inside of me. 

“Any kind will do.” I dug in my heels, voice calm, looking straight into her eyes. This was very unlike the shy and compliant girl I knew myself to be. In hindsight, it was a turning point of my attitude toward challenges, big or small, in my new life, as if procuring a proper first meal signified my will to survive in this new world I’d entered. That significance would only become obvious to me many years later.

The girl behind the counter shrugged and turned to prepare the sandwich. I breathed a sigh of relief, sat down on one of the bar stools, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and pressed it onto the counter. The tightened string inside me relaxed. My mind wandered back to a story my mom told when I first learned about sandwiches.

In that story, mom was a 7-year-old girl walking to school every day by herself with 50 cents in her pocket. That’s what granny would give her every morning for breakfast and lunch. Lured by the smell of freshly baked bread, she would sometimes skip breakfast so that she could use the extra 25 cents to get a baguette with ham for lunch. A sandwich. “So chewy. So delicious!” Remembering the taste of the sandwich, mom looked happy, even after so many years. I listened with intense imagination, my mouth watering.

When I was 7, I saw a sandwich for the first time. It was delicately cut into triangles stacked on top of one another, wrapped in crisp plastic paper sealed with a pink flower sticker. It was on a field trip, and the sandwich belonged to this pretty girl who was the daughter of the Japanese Consul General. I remember standing there, staring at the girl, her pretty water bottle painted with a big-eyed blonde anime character, and her pretty sandwich. Not too many years after that field trip in first grade, when China opened up to the west, in came the army of American brands and fast food restaurants—Coca Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and McDonald’s Golden Arches. But even after that, to me, a sandwich had always been just a sandwich, ham in between two slices of bread, deliciously simple.

I can’t remember anything about the taste of that sandwich, but I vividly recall every detail of how that sandwich was “customized” for me…Maybe I used up my memory capacity for a single meal before that sandwich arrived. Or maybe the truth was I spent that entire meal nervously trying to figure out how much of a tip I was supposed to leave.

“Here is your sandwich Ma’am.” The girl reappeared with my sandwich on a plate, and, produced change for my twenty-dollar bill. She laid both on the counter in front of me. If anyone were to ask me today how that proper meal—my first ever ham and American cheese on white bread—tasted, I’d be sorry to disappoint. I can’t remember anything about the taste of that sandwich, but I vividly recall every detail of how that sandwich was “customized” for me.

Maybe I used up my memory capacity for a single meal before that sandwich arrived. Or maybe the truth was I spent that entire meal nervously trying to figure out how much of a tip I was supposed to leave. I had heard about the American custom of tipping, but I never knew exactly how the calculation was supposed to be done. Maybe instead of enjoying the sandwich I was trying to make sense of the different coins in front of me, guessing the sum they represented without embarrassingly studying each of them.

When I pushed open the door and reentered the chilly air, I left behind the warmth of the sandwich shop, and all the coins from the change, secretly hoping it would be enough for that girl behind the counter. Not bad, I assured myself. That was a proper meal. A good start. A good first day of the next chapter of my life! I felt triumphant and in a good mood. The air no longer felt so chilly. I zipped my coat, and headed straight back to where I’d come from, heels clicking.

Coda:

Now I’d have to survive the rest of the week with the cafeteria closed. Fortunately, one block from the sandwich and soup place, there was a Walgreens. I made a second trip down that direction and picked up a plastic cup, a carton of milk, a pack of Kraft sliced cheese (American cheese!), and a loaf of Wonder bread.

Milk in a carton was foreign to me, as was the concept of different types. Just like cheese, to me milk was milk, you know, the kind that came in glass bottles with dates printed on the paper wrapped around the lid and cream floating on top, which these days you can get from Whole Foods and the like? That was the only kind I’d had back home, delivered daily to our house. Thinking back, that day I must have grabbed a carton of skim milk in that Walgreens because I remembered when I drank it in my dorm room later I was shocked by how watery and awful American milk tasted.

For the rest of that week, I left the food on the windowsill with the window cracked open so the chilly Nebraska air could serve as refrigeration. I would sit on my bed in the dorm listening to the bells of the Episcopal church from the distance, cues for my meal times, and have a sandwich made with two slices of wonder bread and a slice of Kraft American cheese, and a cup of skim milk, the same three meals a day, for the entire week. To this day, ham and cheese sandwiches are on the bottom of my food choice list, and I never drink skim milk.