SOMETIMES IT RAINS

A woman in Chinatown asked me if I had been back to Hong Kong. The question is interesting, because we had never discussed Hong Kong, she just assumed that I learned Cantonese over there.
Actually, I learned it mostly from the movies.
Flawless slangy thug accent.

I started going to the Chinese cinema up the street from my residence back in the eighties. There were several theatres still operating at that time -- The World, The Pagoda Palace, Sun Sing, Taai Ming Sing, and the Wah Seng -- and every week each would have a different double bill. Show up whenever, pay your five bucks, stay as long as you want. Watch both movies more than once, as well as the commercials. Eat lovely snackies and smoke cigarettes in the back row.
Fun for the whole family.

Salt plums, dried cuttle fish, red tongue plums, dried mango, licorice plums, toasted sesame sago crisps, white rabbit, haw pastilles, sunflower seeds, fruit-flavour pork jerky......


There isn't a single Chinese movie theatre still operating in the city. It was once a common shared ambiance, now it's a thing of the past.

I met a someone I dated for a while through the theatres. She liked hot chocolate with whipped cream. We went out several times.
She looked cute with whipped cream on her nose.
No. Nothing. I'm just mentioning a fond memory.
Hot chocolate with whipped cream is very nice.

So are little button noses.

Coming from a different background, I associated whipped cream with Irish Coffee. And though I haven't had Irish coffee in a very long time, because it is made very badly in San Francisco (bar coffee, ugh!), I still have that link in my brain. I probably didn't even like Irish coffee very much, but it was something my father and my brother and I had after biriani and korma at the Indian restaurant in Eindhoven.

The Netherlands did not possess much of a restaurant culture back then. Eindhoven had a number of Indonesian and Chinese restaurants, and not very much else, other than places serving deep-fried weird. The very first restaurant where we ate in that town, before we even moved from Naarden, was Restaurant Swatow on the Keizersgracht.
In Valkenswaard we ate at Restaurant Hong Kong on the Luikerweg a few times, as well as at Restaurant Belleveu, and a few others right on the Market Square. It was rather limited in those years.

Rice-stick noodles in soup with roast meats and chives at the houses of friends. Or bami goreng, which is Indonesian-style fried noodles with spicy additions, topped with an egg.

French fries with mayonnaise. And deep fried weird.

I first had a dowsabau (豆沙飽 sweet bean-paste bun) at China Garden in Eindhoven. I was teaching someone there Dutch at the time. The taste was recognizable -- the filling was something I already knew -- but the idea of a steamed sweet bread was novel. A few months later I had a linyongbau (蓮蓉飽 lotus seed paste bun) at the old Tong Ah.
Yes, I was tutoring Dutch that time also. Different student.
Being bi-lingual in English and Dutch had advantages.
Like steamed doughy buns with delicious fillings.
Or fish with peanuts, cilantro, and chilies.
Many other tasty things.


Upon returning to the United States -- a country of which I had almost no memory, having been all of two years old when we left -- everything was new, foreign, and in some cases downright shocking. American coffee, for instance, was a repulsive stale weak beverage with no redeeming feature, tea was insipid and lukewarm, bread was soft spongy non-food, and fries were limp oil-drenched monstrosities.
Peet's in Berkeley had good coffee, the Caffe Mediterraneum had good espresso drinks, the Trieste on Vallejo in San Francisco was a refuge. Tea? No, had to rely on myself for that. Americans drank herbal crap.

The bread is still bloody awful, and most places can't fry a spud if their lives depend on it.

But the Chinese food is excellent.

Still haven't found a place that does poached fish with peanuts, cilantro, and chilies -- that may be a Chekiang or Shanghai dish, judging by the people who prepared it -- but the linyongbau and dowsabau are quite as yummy as they were in Holland, the little flaky pastries with delicious fillings likewise, and the coffee and tea have improved somewhat.

I haven't helped as many people learn Dutch as before. For some strange reason it just isn't one of the things for which there's much demand in the States.


It's getting colder now that summer is over. That suggests a warm movie theatre or similar crowded public place in which to ensconce oneself for several hours, snacky foods, deep fried unidentifiable objects (random examples in Dutch: Frikandel, Kroket, Bamibal; in Chinese: 煎堆 'jin dui', 芋角 'wu gok', 炸粉果 'ja fan gwo'), and hot beverages.
Perhaps even something with whipped cream.

I haven't been back in years.
To the Netherlands, that is.


November in Holland can be horrid.
It's warmish in HK at this time.
Sometimes it rains. Or not.
San Francisco is ok.

及時雨。




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