FROM A CHINATOWN BAKERY

The other day I found out that Auntie Jenny is eighty years old. Which is both an approximate, and the first time I have ever really known her age. You see, she isn’t family – the term 'Auntie' is what in many cultures you call women who are of your parents generation.

Auntie Jenny is a woman I have known far longer than most people in the United States. When I first met her she was in her early fifties. No, I never asked her age – despite the jet black hair, it was obvious that she was a generation older.

In those days I regularly went to a bakery in Chinatown. My routine was rather predictable – if it was early evening, I would usually have a dowsa-bing or a lowpoh-bing plus a cup of coffee while reading the newspapers.
If it was earlier in the day a gaibow and coffee. Many cups of coffee.
I was there more often in late afternoon than in the morning.

[Dowsa-bing: 豆沙餅 - sweet red bean paste enfolded in a layer of thin flaky pastry. Lowpoh-bing: 老婆餅 - "old wife cake"; candied melon confiture enfolded in a layer of thin flaky pastry. Gaibow: 雞包 - steamed bun filled with chicken, including some ginger and black mushroom for taste and texture, and a slice of lahp-cheung for a salty-sweet flavour addition. Lahp-cheung: 臘腸 - Chinese sausage; usually made with pork, sometimes with duck and duck liver.]


They also had cake - coffee crunch cake and strawberry cake, both very good. As well as many types of pies, and excellent pastries. So sometimes a slice of apple or custard pie. But mostly just the small red-bean pastry.

[Many of the Chinatown bakeries had been opened by cooks who worked at the fancy white-folks hotels and restaurants back in the day when Chinese were never allowed in as customers. Unlike most modern Chinese-American bakeries, which derive a lot of their inspiration from Hong Kong, the old-style bakery / coffee shop / lunch counter had many products that would have been instantly recognizable to white people if they had ventured in. Better and more sincerely made, too. These men justifiably took pride in their abilities.]


Auntie Jenny was one of the three ladies who worked behind the lunch counter. She and her husband ran a laundry, and had worked hard - she owned her own home. After he passed away, she took a job where she could be around people - yes, Cantonese speakers, but her English was perfect. It was a question of atmosphere, mostly.

At that time there were still many folks in Chinatown who had come of age before racial barriers came down, and while they were fully Americanized, C'town was always home. It was the place where they could let their hair down. Their comfort zone.

It was also the one place in the Bay Area where no one ever commented about my accent.
Not even when I started speaking Cantonese.

[And good heavens, I still sound thoroughly atrocious, but now it's mostly because I sound like a thug, rather than just unintelligible.]


For nearly fifteen years I was a frequent customer at that bakery, until they tore out the lunch counter to make room for boxes, and Auntie Jenny had to find another job. Well, she didn't actually need to - she could've easily retired, but she liked being around people. It was her pleasure in the company of others that had kept me going back. Around warm sociable people one always feels welcome; her sparkle and her gentleness drew me in.
Since then I've gone to other C'town bakeries, but it isn't the same.

Auntie Jenny lives in the same neighborhood as I do - about four blocks away. We bump into each other occasionally.
She's a tiny woman, at least a foot shorter than me. She no longer dyes her hair, it's now silvery white. Her eyes shine, she likes to chat with people, and she's got all of her faculties. Lively.
Her hands have become smaller and much more delicate-looking with age - speckled, slightly arthritic, but still strong, still warm.
In her own words: "not doing badly for an eighty year old".
Not too many can say as much.



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