SUNDAY, MAY 8, 2022 EZ RE A
Ming’s urn is prominently displayed. But in the
backyard, she chopped down his prized peach
trees, which had always attracted swarms of
bees in the spring.
Ping recently signed another five-year lease
on the restaurant. He has begun renovations,
reprinting the menus with a photo of his
father’s face and considering a fresh look for
the space.
In their culture, the spirit of the dead takes
two years to ascend to heaven. Maybe this June,
they think, their father will leave them. Even
then, though, he’ll never be gone — not as long
as customers continue to fill Ming’s Restaurant.busy buying supplies, paying bills, balancing
bank accounts. His father’s ledgers still confuse
him. Tucked in their pages are a flurry of sticky
notes from Ming that don’t always make sense.
Ping used to stop by his parents’ home every
morning to confer with Ming about the dis-
crepancies. Now, he’s on his own.
Ping often runs his hands over the ledger’s
pages, taking comfort in the indentations his
father’s pen left on the paper. He thinks of his
father, too, when he steps through the swing-
ing doors to the kitchen. They need to be
replaced. The black paint is chipping, the wood
is notched and scarred. But Ping remembers
how long it took Ming to hang them, how he
couldn’t get the doors lined up quite right and
joked that they would need to stay up forever.
Ping’s father also returns to him through the
customers. Papillion’s police chief, Chris Whit-
ted, and his sergeant took their first few bites of
lunch.
“Everyone knows the food, the family, the
waitstaff,” Whitted said. “It’s the same people
here every week.”
Sgt. Jeff Payton has known the Wang family
for more than three decades. He once did
landscaping for them. When the policemen
finished eating, they stopped to give Lu a hug.
In recent months, she has emerged back into
the world, spending time with her sister in
Pennsylvania and getting a tattoo of a cardinal
on her forearm, which she knows her tradition-
al husband would have hated.
She hasn’t cleaned out their home yet.They paused their trip so he could recover —
and never left.
Ming got a job in the kitchen at Chu’s Chop
Suey House, worked his way up to head chef,
then opened his own family-style restaurant,
which failed. He tried again, opening Ming’s
Restaurant in 1989. Its success was hard-
earned, built on long hours that kept him and Lu
from their children. As Ming died, Ping prom-
ised his father he’d keep the restaurant going.
“By keeping Ming’s going strong, I keep a
piece of my dad alive,” he said.
Ping, now 46, had worked as a flight instruc-
tor before taking over the family business. He
and his sister worked at the restaurant from
the time they were teenagers, taking on more
responsibility after their father officially re-
tired in 2003. To them, Ming’s was the embodi-
ment of their father’s American Dream — the
reason their family had been afforded so many
opportunities.
Now, Ping feels lost without him. None of his
father’s recipes were written down. Instead,
Ping recalls them by memory. His favorite is
Kung Pao chicken. Ming would flip the meat in
the wok until it was fully infused with sauce — a
process that takes so long that the dish was
never put on the restaurant menu. Ping wants
to write these recipes down, so Ming’s seven
grandchildren can inherit his culture, too.
But at the end of days that stretch from 6
a.m. to midnight, fueled by coffee and Diet
Coke, Ping doesn’t find time to open the jour-
nal he bought to record the recipes. He’s tooABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP:
Ming Wang’s widow, Lu Wang, and her
children, Ping Wang and A nne
Peterson, are left to pick up the pieces in
Nebraska. Aubree Peterson reaches for
a tassel given to her by Ming for good
luck. Lu mourns Ming in her home in
Papillion. Ping p repares orders at
Ming’s Restaurant. Ming’s portrait
hangs next to dried roses from the
funeral. Ming a djusts the sign on his
restaurant in 1989. RIGHT: Ming w ith
his children, Ping and Anne. BELOW:
Ming d uring a cruise in March 2020 to
Australia and New Zealand, where he
contracted covid. He was hospitalized
for 74 days before he died on June 8. He
was 71 years old.ARIN YOON FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTFAMILY PHOTO
FAMILY PHOTO
ARIN YOON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
ARIN YOON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST ARIN YOON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
ARIN YOON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST