RETURNING TO FAMILIAR STREETS

Saturday I spent nearly the entire day at the office by myself, simply reading and puttering around. The office is where I spend a lot of time now, since Savage Kitten and I broke up. It's not that I hate being in the same apartment as her - far from it - but there is far less at the office to spark regret and moodiness.
There is a lot there to distract me and keep me busy, and I like the quietness.

It's a coping mechanism. It works.

At around six o'clock, not having eating anything all day, I headed over to Chinatown for a snack.

A waitress at a coffee shop remembered me from twenty five years ago, and at a different coffee shop.


平園咖啡店

The Ping Yuen Coffee Shop was a longtime fixture on Jackson Street (昃臣街), about three blocks from where I lived at the time. In those days I always dropped by a coffee shop or bakery after work, to read the newspapers while having a bite.
Ping Yuen was one of the regular places, and they stayed open later. Which meant that I could spend more time reading.

[Newspapers: The San Francisco Chronicle, The Examiner, 星島日報, 國際日報, and of course the 金山時報. That last was strictly local, one of the oldest newspapers on the West-Coast. ]
After coffee I would often go down the street to the Great Star Theatre (大明星戲院) to catch a movie.


去戲院睇電影

The Great Star was where I first saw Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) in The Story of Woo Viet ('Wu-yuet dik gusi': 胡越的故事), The Recruiter ('Liptau': 獵頭) and A Better Tomorrow ('Yinghong pun sei': 英雄本色).
I can't really remember him in the first two movies, but in A better Tomorrow, he made one hell of an impression.
Since then I saw Underground Love ('Dei-haa tsing': 地下情) at the same theatre, as well as City on Fire ('Long fu fong wan': 龍虎風雲). That last one mentioned may very well be the best Chow Yun-fat movie ever made. However it ain't something you want your kids to watch, at least not until they've seen an actual murder or two. City on Fire, together with Tragic Hero ('Yinghong how hon': 英雄好漢), thoroughly epitomize both the Hong Kong crime movie genre as well as the new style of Cantonese cinema that developed during the eighties.

For a quieter and far more all-family acceptable introduction to Chow Yun-fat's work, you might like An Autumn's Tale ('Chau tien dik chongwa': 秋天的童話), in which he plays opposite the stellar Cherie Chung ('Chong Chu-hong': 鍾楚紅) in a gentle romantic story of two people who are rather mismatched.
A lighthearted comedy in which he stars is The Eighth Happiness ('Baat sing bo hey': 八星報喜), and especially charming in its own way is the goofy Diary of a Big Man ('Taai cheung-fu yat-kei': 大丈夫日記), in which he tries to break up with one woman, who takes it as a proposal and accepts, then tries to impart the ghastly news to his other girlfriend, only to end up hitched to both women, neither of whom know about the existence of each other for most of the tale. It's a light-hearted romp about a man who has gotten himself into a bit of a pickle, and is too gentle to be honest with either woman.

I've seen most of the movies Chow Yun-fat has ever made, but I've never seen the television series that first made him famous: The Bund ('Seunghoi tan': 上海灘).
The theme song from that series is, however, indelibly imprinted on my memory ..... 浪奔, 浪流,萬里滔滔江水永不休..... "waves rush, waves flow, for ten thousand miles the river's torrent does not cease", here well sung by Andy Lau ('Lau Tak-wa': 劉德華), who has also been in numerous great movies.
The series-name is sometimes given as 'Shanghai Shoals' - a much better translation of the title.

[Note: theme song to The Bund (上海灘) originally sung by Frances Yip ('Yip Lai-yi': 葉麗儀). Original sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM8Y0_OnFgg. Concert performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uBkWv8L0eg Note also that the modernized character version of her name looks virtually meaningless: 叶丽仪. Seriously, can anyone read that?!? Like Chow Yun-fat and Cherrie Chung, Frances Yip is Hakka.]

[Additional note, March 29, 2013: The link embedded under「浪奔, 浪流」had disappeared. In searching for a new link, I ran across this, which is delightfully strange. Hatsune Miku (a Japanese computer voice program) singing the theme song. Not bad.]


Those were good days. The Taai Ming Sing Hey Yuen closed sometime in the early nineties, the Ping Yuen Coffee shop ceased operations at roughly the same time. Jackson Street has changed a bit.


鄉音無改鬢毛衰

It was quite a pleasant surprise running into someone I knew from that long ago. Extremely flattering that she still remembered me, and could actually recognize me.
My hair has greyed a bit since then, but my voice is still the same.
And I'm still, apparently, one heck of a 靚仔.



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