COMFORTABLE SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS, HOT BEVERAGES

It was a very enjoyable lunch and I wonder now why I haven't gone there more often since they finally re-opened. Also I got to see the waiter being bad-tempered in a beautifully Hong Kong manner, under very understandable circumstances. Stupid Uber food-wallahs. Stupid Northerners. Stupid half-wit relative. I think the kitchen staff may be distant kin from across the border in Guangdong. The Northerners weren't quite up to par on sales taxes and tipping culture.

My food was delicious, it came with very little delay, he was polite and efficient and treated me and two other people therelike fellow townsmen (one of them was a lady, so fellow townswoman), and the place was clean. So of course I left a forty percent tip.
Partly because I know the 北方人 stiffed him big.

Grilled pork rice and Vietnamese coffee (燒豬肉肉飯、越南咖啡  'siu chü yiuk faan, yuet naam ka fe). I'm guessing he and some friends scraped together funds to buy the place, which had closed during covid. Reprint the menu with new prices and make a go of it.
Learn the dishes, upgrade a few of them. Give it the old college try.

When he's had it up to here his English takes a few steps back. I can understand that. I too find crystal clear language less satisfying than opaque and lyrical vituper-tongue then.

He and the other gentlemen who work there are probably mostly Chinese from Vietnam, long time resident in Hong Kong. That would explain certain details. But I did not ask. That might be seen as prying. At some point I may inquire about his surname, that's more acceptable in a Chinese context. Southern Chinese. Northern Chinese are notoriously open about personal details.


"My name is Huang Fuyi, call me Bob, or Mike, I'm from a well-known mid-sized city in Liaoning with a famous pagoda and a regional specialty that if you have a chance you really must try, black boiled pig, there's a restaurant in San Leandro that does it almost as good as my family. I work as an accountant and import ladders and snakes on the side.
You should meet my cousin Dingo, he's just like you!"


Once you get to Central China they're considerably more reserved. South China, because of smuggling, tax evasion, brigandage, and insurrectionist tendencies, rarely volunteers much beyond the family appellation. Which serves to demonstrate shared Chinese histories and membership in the wider kin and culture group. That's enough.


And I seriously doubt that anyone's cousin Dingo is anything like me.
Cantonese speaking pipe smoking Dutch American?
Yeah, um, no. Hardly.



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