She held her chopsticks under the hot water from the coffee machine in the corner, then dried them assiduously. Very Hong Kong. But if she so distrusted the cleanliness of the place, why did she bother ordering any food? I've eaten there many times without fearing for my health -- well, it probably hasn't had a positive effect on my cholesterol or blood-pressure, now that I think about it -- and I enjoy the sheer goodness of the fare.
三餸一湯
Mui choi kau yiuk (pork belly and salted vegetable). Keh ji (eggplant, slightly browned on the edges, then stewed). Syu-chai (potatoes) with a little sliced fatty pork. Plus rice, and a bowl of old fire soup.
And hot sauce.
They also do fabulous steamed rice sheet with fresh cilantro.
Plus black bean sauce spare ribs rice.
And won ton noodles.
That's 芫茜腸粉 ('yuen sai cheung fan'), 豆豉排骨蒸飯 ('dau si pai gwat jing fan'), and 雲吞麵 ('wantan min'), respectively, in case you're hungry.
Please imagine Facebook-style photos of food here.
I don't have a cell-phone.
Sorry.
As far as I know, their chopsticks are clean.
Being neurotic about utensils is a very Kongish thing. Often they'll dip their chopsticks and soup spoons in the first cup of hot tea from the pot, then wipe 'em furiously, because everyone knows there's minute specks of horse puckey in the air, and people with deadly infectious diseases have been coughing all over the neighborhood. Or within a dozen miles of it.
Plus plague-carrying mainlanders.
The family that runs the eatery happens to be from the mainland. Lord only knows what they're spreading whenever they talk Toishanese. As they often do. My apartment mate is of Toishanese ancestry, and has never infected me with anything, but I'm just a stupid white guy, so what do I know?
All indications were that chopstick-wipey woman enjoyed her won ton noodles.
Let us pray that she doesn't come down with Marburg fever.
Which, naturally, she might.
AFTER WORD
Many fastidious South-East Asian Chinese do the same thing with tea and wiping, because, of course everything is filthy if natives or white people look at it. And there is all-kinds of airborne filth around, that's just what foreign countries have. Natives, German or British sex-tourists, and flying faeces.
Much like Ireland or Holland, in other words.
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