TWO CUPS OF MILK TEA

All good things come in pairs. Milk tea. Pastries. Packs of Camel non-filter cigarettes bought in Chinatown. Fruits, fresh vegetables, and snackies. This afternoon I gave my neighbor the Indonesian Chinese lady who lives downstairs two bitter melons (and some yauchoi). This morning our landlady gave us some pastries and snacky things.

Two cups of Hong Kong Milk Tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai chaa'). One with lunch, then after shopping one at tea-time with a wedge of Japanese style cheesecake (日式芝士蛋糕 'yat sik ji si daan gou') before the two older local gentlemen arrived. With their hearing issues. One of them is planning a trip to Guangdong near the Fujian border to see his girlfriend soon. Flying on what I heard as "Café Pacific", which would be a good name for a chachanteng.

I have never been anywhere near the Guangdong-Fujian border. I should go sometime. Malaria country; tigers and gibbons to the south, oyster omelettes and pirates to the north. Exiled literati expected to die of tropical diseases either side. Sounds like a fun place.

And somewhere there in any direction there is the girl from Viet (越) with the lovely forehead washing her silk on the banks of a stream (誰憐越女顏如玉，貧賤江頭自浣紗 'seui lin yuet neui ngaan yü yiuk, pan jin gong tau ji wun saa'). At least, I imagine so.
That's probably as good a reason to go as any.

The two older gentlemen, by the way, are English speakers. Their hearing defects probably also extend to their mothertongue (Toisanwa 臺山話), but they are best at mishearing in English, which they've spoken since infancy. I do not speak Toisan.
So I mumble at them in English.

I have learned to never address Toisanese in Hong Kong Cantonese if they were born here, because the result is that they look at me funny and say something like "it sounds almost like you are trying to speak Chinese", or "I'm sorry, I'm not Japanese but Chinese".
Wich is hurtful. I thought I was saying it right.

[FYI: The line cited above is from a poem by Wang Wei (王維) written over a thousand years ago during the Tang Dynasty period about the young ladies in Luoyang (洛陽女兒行), a place where I have also never been.
Neither Dutch Americans nor pipe tobacco existed at the time, so life was hard.]

Smoked two bowlfuls in C'town. Cornell & Diehl red Virginia in first a Dunhill bent bulldog Shellbriar, then a Comoy Sunrise apple with a walnut stain. Good things come in pairs.



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