酸甜苦辣 the sour, the sweet, the bitter and the spicy are four key elements of Chinese cooking. More often the idiom is used to symbolize a life containing both joy and pain. My mother says all the time when she is cooking, “Life is like a dish. It has the sour, the sweet, the bitter and the spicy. Only when the different flavors mix together, life becomes interesting.” Cooking, as well as other domestic chores, became the source of both joy and pain for my grandma and my mother. During the worst times, grandma would overwork her hands in order to bring food to the table for the entire extended family, until she finally stopped feeling the pain on her fingers and Band-Aids could not cover the wounds anymore.

When I look at my grandma’s, my mother’s and my own hands, all three look very similar in shape and size. But if you observe closer and touch our hands, you will feel the obvious difference. My hands are smooth and soft, while my grandmother’s red and coarse hands are full of wrinkles and wounds that were cut opened again and again, never having the chance to fully heal. They are what my grandma calls “laborer’s hands.” My mother’s hands are somewhere in the middle.

I casted my hands and added vinegar, brown sugar, water chestnut powder, chili powder to each ice sculpture to symbolize the sacrifice that both my grandma and mother made with their fragile hands for the family. The ice slowly melts and drips into the bowls and plates below, releasing a complex smell to anyone who walks near. The smell evokes my childhood memory of living in a household with my grandma and my mother in an undeveloped rural town in China. The water accumulates into the plates and bowls and forms a different color in each container, representing slow labor and sacrifice. The hand gestures, including fists, relaxed hands, and tense opened palms, capture the strength and resilience of the two working women.