IT WAS WHAT IT IS

Lunch today was lovely in a way, surrounded by Germans. At a chachanteng. Where the Germans admitted they needed help, seeing as a chachanteng menu does not compute. Unless you're from Hong Kong or Taiwan, where such cuisine is not uncommon. All of them ended up with fried rice, fried noodles, egg rolls, and multiple glasses of cold lemon tea.
Now I know what to feed Germans, in case I ever have to host them.

What I had was a club sandwich and fries. Because that's what you do. In a Hong Kong style chachanteng when you're feeling unorthodox.

Gangster uncle came in halfway through my lunch, without any henchmen, and dined by himself. It's probably unfair and inaccurate to call him 'gangster', as he's more a fixer and an honest broker, but some of his associates are undoubtedly walking on the shady side.


Less than five hours after I left with a pipe clenched between my teeth I was back in the neighborhood, which inexplicably seemed jampacked with non-Chinese, some of whom looked at my pipe quizzically. Perhaps where they come from people don't have briar and use rolled-up newspapers. Possibly the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Or the Salzburger Nachrichten.

SPOFFORD ALLEY SMOKE

Foggy. Nice. Not particularly cold. White woman with an accidentally naked breast walks by. Stubbornly look in a different direction, don't need any distraction from my smoke. Later in the burger joint, two darling young women with bouncy black, black pigtails and white boyfriends come in. I note that the height differential is not too great.

The beer hall was crowded, so was the karaoke joint, but the Caucasian music fans did not misbehave too badly, and other than some inane Spice Girls number did not inflict much suffering. You know sonny boy, in my day we didn't have Spice Girls garbage; we had good tunes at the karaoke bar. Marlene Dietrich, Bing Crosby, the Pointer Sisters. That was real music! And the videos were still black and white! None of this modern stuff!

The young lady from Peking leafing through the song lists standing next to the bookseller had pleasing roundnesses. He couldn't see that, but my vantage point was perfect. A bit crazy, as many mainlanders from the north are, but she seemed pleasant enough.

 

The ROC flag features in this essay only because I would far rather have had something by 鄧麗君 sung than that pointless and jejune crap from the Spice Girls.

Perhaps next week there will be more Chinese there.



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