THEY HAVE THE BEST CHARSIU PASTRIES!

One of my favourite teatime spots is not very impressive. The cakes aren't particularly fancy, there are no tablecloths, and the scones and crumpets, far from being hot and toasty, are entirely non-existent. Nor is the tea brewed in fine pots filled with leaves from Assam and Darjeeling, and ladies do not wear gloves there.


It is, in fact, the kind of place that would unprepossess many of my upstanding relatives. Not so much my late grandmother, who came from a tea-drinking culture, but my mother's side of the family.
Who seldom drank tea.

I have had no contact with the kinfolk who settled in Santa Barbara, since a very brief exchange of e-mails back in 1998 or 1999. They were old then, and we had long grown apart.
Which is an understatement van jewelste, given that growing up in the Netherlands it was impossible to ever meet them, and my mother did not have a particularly high regard for her siblings.

I'm assuming that that is due to the contentiousness hereditary among some Presbyterian / Calvinist tribal groupings. Repressed bloodlust meets hard-headed stubbornness, and all that.

I last met them before I was conversational.

If I had ever had the chance to take my mother to the place in question, she would have tolerated it with good grace, but maybe told me afterwards "son, you're goofy".


港式奶茶一杯


Normal boys do NOT have a hot cuppa 奶茶 in a bakery frequented by Toishanese peasant types, quietly listening in on the other customers talking, while munching delicious egg tarts.
Or flaky charsiu turnovers.

Personally I think they're the best charsiu turnovers in the city.
And the patrons respect my sense of privacy.
These are important things!

The listening-in part is only half-eared, as most of the time the regional speech used is particularly dense, rather than standard city Cantonese.
Except for the frequent punctuation with 'diu'.
Either snapped or drawled.
An emphatic.


最好嘅叉燒酥！


The street on which it is located is quiet, without either the flood of shoppers OR the herds of tourists. There's a job-center for Chinese speakers across the street, a place where you can arrange for a grave stone, and a doctor who specializes in women problems.

That right there could be a wonderful narrative: a gentleman in between assignments as a dimsum chef experiences psychological problems with a woman because of a funerary marker, OR dreams of placing a nice tomb stone on top of a problematic woman at his last job.

On one of the upper floors, an opera academy practices, a few doors down from the bakery a chess club meets in a basement. Towards Clay Street are a florist, a laundromat, a printers, a bubble tea place, and an herbalist. At the intersection of Washington is a "tea-restaurant" (茶餐廳 'chaa chanteng') where good rice porridge and Hong Kong style spaghetti can be had. Plus baked porkchops with 'Portugee' sauce.
There's a fine noodle restaurant a few doors up from that.
Plus more herbal stores, and barber shops.


As I mentioned, many of the regulars are Toishanese peasant types. The air is filled with that strange stand-in for the Cantonese 'S' sound, the Toishan 'HTHL'. Hthl'''''''''''''''''!
The 'T' of Tong Yan (唐人 "Chinese person") falls silent

Not 'sap man', but 'hthleep moon'. Tong yan becomes 'hong an'. And there are other more rural locutions.

In several ways, Toishanese people are like the Yorkshiremen of China. Wry-humoured, given to exaggeration for rhetorical effect, and capable of keeping a grimly straight face when telling a particularly tall one.

It's a resilient subculture.
Albeit unintelligible.


Most of the patrons are middle-aged men, no longer the young fellows who were gonna make it big in Gold Mountain, but settled down and grown realistic about their narrower prospects. Maintain and survive as long as possible, stay at a job that provides little money but a lot of community, and force the younger generation into college.
The boy will succeed, and eventually dad will retire.
When he damned well feels like it.
At around eighty.

They've learned to control their smoking, which is quite remarkable for Cantonese gentlemen. Partly this is due to the horrendous high price for a pack of fags in California, which hits the lower income levels hardest, largely it's because the health codes no longer allow you to have a ciggy going while comfortably inside with your bun and coffee.

And you really do want to sit inside.

Two small spry women work there.
Who also speak Toishanese.
It adds something.
Home.



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