A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts

According to Chinese tradition, those who die hungry or unjustly come back to haunt the living. Some are appeased with food, but not all ghosts are successfully mollified. In this chilling collection of stories, Ying Chang Compestine takes readers on an exhilarating journey through time and across different parts of China. Hungry ghosts have prevailed- from the building of the Great Wall in 200 B.C.E. to the modern day of iPods- and continue to torment those who wronged them. At once a window into the history and culture of China and an ode to Chinese cuisine, this assortment of frightening tales- complete with historical notes and savory recipes- will both scare and satiate.

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Praise for A Banquet For Hungry Ghosts
“…gruesome but delightful…laced with beautiful (as well as lurid) images… difficult to shake.”
— Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“…chilling tales honoring Chinese food and ghost lore.”
— Booklist

“…will whet the appetites of …of ghost gourmet with a sophisticated palate.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“…offers up enough fright—and food—to keep kids returning for seconds.”
— Horn Book Review

“…deliciously frightening”
— School Library Journal

“Ghost Stories with a Chinese Twist”
— The San Francisco Chronicle

Awards & Accolades

Children's Literature Assembly

AARP
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2010 Notable Book
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Grandparent's Book for Children

Cooking A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts

After reading A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts, students and I talked about writing while cooking their favorite recipes from the book!
Students from Singapore American International School cook their favorite recipes from A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts.

Cooking with Martin Yan

Watch me cook a recipe based on A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts  with world-renowned chef Martin Yan on Crystal Cruise.

Why I Wrote "Banquet"

Blog posts originally published on Tor.com

On Becoming a Hungry Ghost

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In Chinese folklore, hungry ghosts devour everything they can find and are never satisfied. We may scoff at their appalling lack of self control. Yet if we look around, how many of us have become entwined in the same fate?

Ghosts to My Rescue

While I was writing A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts, I frequently wondered if at some time every child has fantasized about having a powerful ghost come to their aid. The brightest light in my childhood was torn from me when, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, my father was imprisoned for the “crime” of being a Western-trained surgeon. His act of loyalty, choosing to stay and help build a new China, was met with punishment. I was categorized as bourgeois, and attacked by working-class children at school.

True Friendship

In my debut novel, Revolution is not a Dinner Party, there is a scene where Ling, the main character, watches her father burn the family’s books and photos. This actually occurred in my childhood. My father, a prestigious surgeon trained by American missionaries, destroyed all his beloved books to protect our family from the zealous Red Guard. Yet he continued my education in secret, which included English lessons, a dangerous violation. He instilled in me a love for books and a yearning for freedom. During the Cultural Revolution, the only books we were allowed to read were Mao’s teaching and government-approved propaganda that praised the Communist philosophy. Everything else was banned and burned.

Pretending to Be a Teacher

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As a young girl living under the Communist system in China, nothing was more thrilling for me than breaking government rules and getting away with it. I traded ration tickets at the black market, and bought meat and eggs from the “back door,” where Communist Party members obtained their fine food without being inconvenienced by ration tickets or long queues.

A Bird Out of the Cage
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As a child, the only trip my parents took me on was to Southern China, to visit my dying grandmother. My parents spent months applying for various travel documents, retrieving permits from the local police and standing in long lines for days to buy the train tickets. When we had to spend a night in a hotel, the clerk not only demanded that my parents show all kind of official permits, she also insisted on seeing their marriage certificate. Failure to produce a certificate would have resulted in stiff punishment and public humiliation. For years in China, it was illegal for unmarried couples to stay in the same hotel room. Even today, it is not uncommon for police to routinely search rooms in the middle of the night, demanding identification and marriage papers.

Ghosts of the Great Wall

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For three years I worked as the food editor for Martha Stewart’s magazine, Body+Soul. I began with my own food column, “Yin/Yang Diner,” in which I developed recipes based on the Chinese concepts of Yin/Yang balance and harmony. Before long, I was asked to develop all of the recipes for each issue. Instead of trying to pre-plan each recipe, I would go to numerous grocery stores and farmer’s markets and buy whatever ingredients appealed to me. Upon returning home, I would spend hours in my kitchen, pairing the ingredients, cooking and tasting in search of the perfect balance.

Every Word Counts

Even after publishing 18 books and over 60 feature articles in national magazines, when people ask me what I do for a living, I feel very self-conscious telling them that I am a writer. To be frank, writing is very, very hard for me, even with simple things like an e-mail. The stark differences between Chinese and English grammar make it difficult to remember all the rules. To make things worse, I was taught to memorize individual words when learning English, a cumbersome method that limits my ability to spell correctly. I didn’t hear about phonetic spelling until my son was in grade school.
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