WORLD SUPPER TRAVEL

Entirely without planning it I visited two great metropoli at lunch today and yesterday. Today's lunch (I had made sure last week that they would be open today) was preserved mustard green with pork and braised thick noodles (雪菜肉絲炆粗麵 'suet choi yiuk si man cou min'). Almost a cliché quintessence of Shanghai in a Hong Kong environment. Both the preserved mustard green (雪菜 "snow vegetable") and pork combo, and anything with that type of thick noodle (粗麵 "rough noodles") are typical at small eateries run by Shanghainese exiles in Tsimshatsui and on HK Island.

Yesterday's lunch was salt fish and preserved meat claypot rice (鹹魚臘味煲仔飯 'haam yü laap mei bou jai faan'). You can hardly get more Hong Kong Cantonese than that. Despite the fact that the restaurant was crowded with Mandarin speakers. For most of my meal I was the only person who had ordered in Cantonese there. The others were all young mainland tourists exploring C'town. Kudos to the lady working their for being able to speak Mandarin (to them), English to others), Toisanwaa to neighborhood people getting some quick food to go, and Cantonese (primarily to me). Usually I am not the only Cantonese speaker there.

Little claypots with savoury meaty or fishy stuff over rice are classic Hong Kong cold rainy weather comfort food. And salt fish (鹹魚 'haam yü') is very Hong Kong.
It's fermented. Strong. Not something most outsiders would like.
Dutchmen and Indonesians, perhaps.

It's been very cold and rainy for the past two days now. Here in SF we are not used to that. We are a tropical people, more accustomed to running in slo-mo into the surf, wearing our scanty hot hot hot bright red swim togs. Surely you've seen Bay Watch?
That's what life in California is all about.


It was frigid and wet down in Chinatown, and many places were closed for the first day of New Year. Darn near arctic. The only people wearing shorts were tourists, stupid kwailo. The hospital pharmacy (東華醫院藥房 'tung waa yi yuen yeuk fong') was closed too, because of the holiday (closed yesterday also, different holiday), but I did find some new special luxury cigarettes at one of my regular stops, tangerine peel flavour capsule slims (貴煙陳皮爆珠 'gwai yin chan pei baau chyu') manufactured by the Guizhou Tobacco Industrial Co., Ltd. (貴州中煙工業有限責任公司 'gwai jau jung yin gung yip yau haan gung si'). Exquisite.

Anyhow, I have enough latanoprost to last another day at least, and I've eaten well.
So all things considered, it has been quite a lovely day.
Forty four degrees Faharenheit right now.


The hot red swim togs stayed in storage.



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