Origins of the Lazy Susan

As the Mid-Autumn Festival is happening tomorrow, families all over the world will gather for reunions, delicious meals, and mooncakes. Glorious dinners with delectable food will happen around circular tables, in the middle of which will sit a revolving glass tray known as the “Lazy Susan”.

It’s difficult to notice the Lazy Susan when so much good food is coming your way. Quick, grab yourself some twice cooked pork with peppers! Oh! Don’t let the Squirrel Fish pass you by! Yum, how about a fresh cut watermelon for dessert?

But do you know the story of the innovative woman behind this revolving wheel of eating? They tried to hold her down, but her legend just keeps cropping up.

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Wang Su San (王苏三) was born in 1974, the youngest of three daughters. Her mother and father were poor farmers from China’s central Jiangxi province. Though you wouldn’t think it, Su San’s parents were quite liberally minded and her father especially often encouraged his daughters to study any subject that appealed to them. Farmer Wang’s daughters were somewhat of a scandal in that rural community – running about the township like they owned the place. He would always tell them, “Though it’s man’s world out there, you can do whatever you want just as long as you don’t give in.”

Of the three kids Su San was the brightest and most gifted. When it came time to go out on her own, she had been accepted to one of the most prestigious universities in Beijing. As an undergraduate in the country’s top electrical engineering program she was the only female in her cohort and often dismissed and patronized by her fellow male classmates. They openly doubted her intelligence and degraded her behind her back.

Though if they were really being honest with themselves, deep down they were threatened by this outspoken, brilliant, and beautiful woman.

She made them all look bad with the genius of her creations. Despite the grueling academic nature of their program Su San still found time to make new inventions. She built a highly effective air purifier out of common household items. It was capable of dropping the AQI down to near zero, for a small fraction of the cost compared to other air purifiers. She designed a boat shaped like a dragon that could cruise along the rivers of her native Jiangxi at nearly 55 miles per hour, despite not having a motor and being paddled by 8 people!

Su San was seemingly good at everything. While her classmates sat in their bunks during Mid-Autumn Festival, eating the miserable Bao Tou their mothers had sent them, she was in the school cafeteria cooking up something new over the weekend. Her innovative new cakes were filled with Red Bean paste, circular, and looked like the moon. “I’ll call them mooncakes!” she beamed. And, in fact, they more delicious and magical than a slice of the moon.

But as her father warned her, it really was a man’s world and very few men had the self-esteem to let her be her. Men constantly knocked her down, in both large and tiny ways, trying to get her to know “her place” in the world, which in their misogynistic view was a very small and prescribed place indeed.

Not all the men were like that of course. One of Su San’s classmates, Zhang Hou Yi, was a shy and quietly brilliant young man. He was amazed by Su San and head over heels in love with her. Hou Yi didn’t ever think such an attractive and intelligent woman could ever love him back, but that’s just what happened. They first were friends and study partners, but soon Su San found herself daydreaming about Hou Yi’s awkward good looks and bookish charm.

These two star crossed lovers were soon married and, like many folks in China, constantly visiting family whenever there was a major holiday. Hou Yi came from a large and moderately successful farming family in Dong Bei, China’s northeastern region. While his parents were thrilled to see their son married, the clashes with Su San were near constant. They didn’t appreciate the way she carried herself or her loud (and most times correct) voicing of her opinions. While many of the women in Hou Yi’s family would go into the kitchen and clean up from the meal after dinner, Su San would not give in, instead she stayed at the table and engaged the men in conversation.

Hou Yi’s family were good people, but I guess some conservative habits are difficult to change. However, one holiday weekend it all came to a head. Hou Yi’s mother verbally berated her daughter-in-law for her refusal to serve the men during the meal. In response, Su San locked herself in her room for two days, refusing to come out or even eat.

While the rest of the family thought she was in there pouting, in fact Su San was at her inventors table constructing a new invention out of pure spite towards the family. She emerged on the third day just before dinner, placing her invention atop the dining room table.

It was a small glass table, sitting atop the larger table, that rotated using battery power. She turned to her mother-in-law coldly “There you go, now the men can be served their damn dishes!” And she walked out, never coming back to see her in-laws.

From that day forth, the family referred to her dumb invention as the Lazy Su San, and it was a scandalous invention! Hou Yi’s mom hated the stupid thing, but secretly the other family members kept using it. In fact, other people from the village marveled at the invention and copied the technology to have Lazy Susan’s in their own homes. As time went by it found its way into restaurants all over China and is now a standard piece of equipment for any dining experience in Asia.

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I wish I could tell you that Wang Su San got credit for this invention that surely would have made her a multi-millionaire, but sadly she died shortly after this incident.

Unbeknownst, to most people Su San and Hou Yi had been developing a new invention in the lab where they were graduate students. This project they were working on was a new type of rocket fuel called Jibby Q-12.  The fuel had been through initial experiments and the preliminary data was promising, some said even revolutionary. It was hypothesized that with Jibby Q-12 a ship traveling from Earth would be able to reach the moon in under thirty minutes and at a fraction of the cost when compared with current technology.

This was obviously a closely guarded secret that very few knew about. Moreover, only a very small amount of the substance existed all - about one vial’s worth.

If carried to completion the project would make Su San and Hou Yi world famous, rich, and free from the cares and pressures of this world. They would even be able to take vacations to the moon whenever they wanted to be alone just the two of them.

But an evil associate in their lab, Peng Meng, was jealous of this creation. Though a scientist himself, Peng Meng was of an inferior mental quality than that of Su San. He was arrogant and selfish, as well as one of those types of men Su San’s father warned her about.

One night when Su San was working late, Peng Meng came into the lab and demanded she hand over the lone vial of Jibby Q-12. She refused and told him to go home, but Peng Meng became violent and threatened her life. In desperation she drank the contents of the vial and dropped dead instantly.

Peng Meng was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. But Hou Yi was heartbroken. Now every Mid-Autumn Festival he lays out a bowl of fruit and eats mooncakes to remember his deceased lover. He stares up at the moon and sadly dreams about what could have been…

And that is where the term Lazy Susan comes from.