SNACK EATEN IN DARKNESS

Imagine that you are staying with an auntie and an uncle in the New Territories. It's well over eighty degrees and long past midnight, it will be hovering around ninety degrees Fahrenheit during the day time. The concrete pavement of the back courtyard feels hot and sticky to the touch of your bare feet (which is why you are wearing flip flops), you just finished watching seven episodes of a forty part series, each episode guaranteed to have at least one death, accident, or domestic disaster, half a dozen crying jags, and a scene involving massive amounts of food shared by four generations, taking place over a thirty year period.
And you saw Little Epidendrum devour nearly a whole duck.

Remarkably, Little Epidendrum is the elderly auntie with whom you are staying, but also the sixteen year old ingénue in the series. Could be the auntie a few decades ago. She's related to your co-worked Stinky Fang, which explains how you ended up here. You shared strong opinions about the chachanteng on the ground floor of the Ting Wah Mei Tower fifteen stories below the office with him. Both of you liked their strong milk tea and the Teochow Fried Rice Noodles (潮州炒米粉, mixed veggies and shrimp stirfried with sliced shallot and long thin rice noodles, no soy sauce but a jigger of stock added to the pan, best eaten with sambal).

For some reason this image is conflated with a long column of ants raiding the refuse bin at the far end of the courtyard. There must be something good in there. Perhaps the remains of the duck? Shouldn't they have saved that for broth?

In any case, it all makes you peckish. Yes, it really doesn't help that you've been drinking weak tea to stay hydrated all evening.

You are hydrated, wired to the tits, and hungry.

Very well. Choi pou faan (菜泡飯). Small vegetables parched, a heap of cooked rice added to the pan with water or stock and everything mixed a bit over heat, then served and eaten as a rice soup, with some 榨菜，醬蘿蔔， or 辣筍茸 (various pickled vegetables) on the side. Quick, easy, lazy. Very 江南的 (south of the river-ish), but not so far south. Reminiscent of Shanghai, maybe Wenzhou. Where you have never been, but some of your favourite gangster movie stars hail from there, and their stories were often set there.

Let's see, where is yesterday's copy of the Commercial Times? Oh yes, near the mah jong table. You played mah jong for over seven hours, that being obviously the main reason you had been invited. Like all the previous times. Auntie Epidendrum, her husband, and Stinky Fang needed another player.

You didn't loose too badly. Stinky had lost a lot, and had retired to the side room to sleep and was probably having horrible dreams because of the heat, his monetary disaster, and the fact that he had eaten several bags of fried crispy snacks while losing so much in the heat. So all in all this trip was well worth it. Entertaining and "restfull". And there was still some fatty pork you could add to your meal.


You should have something to eat.
It will help you sleep.



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