Like you, I have a Facebook account. But probably unlike you, mine is a potent source of vicarious weirdness. Which is a good thing, because I try to keep my real world life as sane and unexciting as possible.
Facebook stirs me in strange ways.
I am a calm man.
Facebook wishes me to have a more interesting life. To that end, it suggests 'friends' based on the slimmest of similarities, rather like Amazon suggesting purchases. Not that there is a profit motive to FB, but both internet entities have this desperate need to be relevant, as measured by how often you take their bait.
Amazon for several years has suggested Christian Apocalypse romances and handbags, based on my previous buying patterns (documentary hypothesis, textual exegesis, and a fancy watch), and Facebook has decided that I like Rabbis and Hong Kong girls.
In a way, Facebook is right.
They probably guessed Hong Kong girls because I have at times posted stuff that included Chinese phrases.
[The logical connection between Hong Kong girls and Rabbis is what both of them eat at Christmas.]
Naturally I am fascinated. The very idea of a "Hong Kong Girl" is racy and titillating. So before clicking on 'send friend request', I cruise into their Facebook pages to discover what they are like.
Apparently they have between three and five thousand friends, evenly distributed among both genders, and including people with non-Chinese names.
Who are all fascinated by their photo albums.
Which are filled with handbags.
HANDBAGS?
Sometimes also the odd photo of a motorcar, dinner at a restaurant, shoes, bracelets..... but mostly handbags. Very expensive handbags.
Sweetheart, you could have posted a photo of you and you favourite cousin on the Star Ferry, or at the top of the Peak..... Handbags?
Do handbags represent freedom, your dreams, romance, a fairy tale?
If so, why is one of them puke green?
Looks to be your favourite, too.
Two dozen pictures of it.
From different angles.
And perspectives.
Why on earth do you have so many images of handbags?
Perhaps it's your version of soft core porn?
Repressed lust and frustration?
I know there's something sexual and deeply symbolic about handbags, but for the life of me I can't figure out what.
And I really don't want to know.
I like freaks, but not that bad.
GOODBYE, KITTY!
The alternative to the handbag queens, though in lesser numbers, are the Hello Kitty types.
I like Hello Kitty too, lord knows, Hello Kitty Texas Chainsaw Punk tattoos, Hello Kitty Urinal Targets, Hello Kitty Hamburger Patties, and Hello Kitty Boxer Shorts (all to be seen at 'the Official Hello Kitty Merchandising Office') leave me breathless, but heaven's sakes, girlies, y'all have NO life if that is the summa that roils your kettles.
Yes, I have a Hello Kitty kippah, and no, I shan't send you a picture.
Actually, amidst the Handbaggers and Hello Kittens there was one young lady who wanted to do something to me or with me till I 'fly up into the heavens' (idiomatic expression), and whose handbagless photo album showed a keen familiarity with hot wax, but given that she's ten thousand miles away, doesn't look particularly bright, and made the same offer to over four thousand other folks (evenly distributed among both genders, and including people with non-Chinese names), the prospect was less than inviting.
While the intellectual conceit of passion with a non-handbag obsessed woman has a certain frisson, the realization that it would at best lead to sharing intimacy with over four thousand other victims (evenly distributed etcetera) was a distinct downer, and just knowing that some of them combine the handbag and Hello Kitty fetishes is frightening.
So no.
I shall not share your hot wax.
The reason why most men are frightened of handbags is because we do not understand them. Handbags are a potent sexual-communicative object, in that the choice of handbag conveys something about the bearer and sends an unmistakable message.
We just don't know what it is.
Portable womb? Hair? I've got baggage?
What?
The interpretive possibilities are endless.
Such random chaos and anarchy disturbs us, we prefer far simpler communication, as is embodied in the phrases 'yes', 'no', 'go away you pervert', and 'have another beer'.
Simple. Straightforward. And guaranteed to keep the dialogue flowing.
The handbag also represents a happy feeling of ownership and pride, but men will instinctively resent it precisely for that as being unfair competition. We cannot compare, because we don't have fancy buckles and straps, and we aren't covered in puke green leather.
We know we can rectify all or part of that lack, but for reasons which are strangely not obvious to women, we resist.
Puke green leather doesn't work for us.
[Neither does the Hello Kitty kippah, but I'm wearing it ironically.]
We KNOW that shlepping around the handbag radiates your desirability and makes you ecstatic. That part we grasp.
But we fail to see why we should be like that.
Puke green leather.
A leprechaun.
Not us.
Some of us shaved today. Didn't you notice?
Hey, I'm wearing clean clothes!
For entirely different reasons, most men object to Hello Kitty. That saccharine feline, with her cutesy-poo affectations, appearance, and accoutrements, does not dingle our bell in any way.
Not as an accessory, not as a decorative motif.
Eyes spaced precisely so. Bow perfectly canted to one side.
Blank emotionless expression.
No, doesn't work.
Perhaps if she were covered in puke green leather?
IRMA BUCKETGUT
One suggested FB friend can only be described as 'Irma Bucketgut'. Everything on her page indicated capacious junkfood appetite. Big, dripping, greasy fistfulls of meat shreds on a roll, tureens of cheese-flavoured mush nibbles, bacon on everything.
Pizza. Burgers. Fried chicken. Meatloaf.
The coveted 64 oz. big gulp mug.
A princess of pork chop.
Yes, she had a handbag.
As well as Hello Kitty panties.
No, she was not a Hong Kong girl.
I declined that Facebook suggestion, just like many others.
I cannot figure out what similarities Facebook assumed we had.
However, if Facebook decides that I need to be friends with a rabbi who collects handbags and Hello Kitty garbage, I may be powerless to resist.
After all, we have so much in common.
Like Chinese food.
And a kippah.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Showing posts with label Cantonese Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cantonese Women. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
GOLD AND GREY
During July in San Francisco there are some evenings when even though it's foggy, the temperature is still pleasant, neither cold nor warm. This usually means that it has been exceptionally hot elsewhere - high temperatures inland pull moist cool air in from the ocean; as it rolls in, it turns grey and opaque.
I enjoy talking a walk with my pipe at such times, and often end up at the far end of a Nob Hill cul-de-sac which catches southern light, where the Bougainvillea blooms.
[Bougainvillea, more familiar to Spanish speakers as 'Trinitaria' because of the shape of the bloom, thrives on sunlight that hits south-facing areas. The flower itself is small and rather modest, what strikes the eye is the three-leafed collar surrounding it, brilliantly crimson or intensely purple.]
A woman lives there, on the ground floor. She is ancient, and I think it must be her building, because she has the garden, and there are trees there that have lived a long time. Some evenings she comes out and putters around, weeding, watering, or sweeping the little brick patio under her trees.
I observe from my perch beyond the fence, but I doubt that she has ever even noticed that someone is spying on her.
I first saw her a few years ago when I was scarfing down some snackiepoos at a Chinatown bakery. She sat at a table all by herself, with a cup of milk-tea and a slice of strawberry cake. She would fork a bite, masticate thoughtfully, pause, take a sip of tea. Then after another pause, fork another piece. It was hypnotic to watch.
She may have experienced that confection more thoroughly than anybody else could have, as if she sought to grasp the innermost being of the pastry.
I was somewhat worried that it was the only thing she would eat that day. She looked frail, crumpled, small. Her clothes did not betray any great resources, and she was old, old, old. There are many elderly women in Chinatown, widows whose husbands had worked hard all their lives, married late, then died barely into retirement age.
You have to wonder how some of those ladies survive - left alone with straightened circumstances and narrowed horizons, in a country whose particularities are still so foreign.
When the waitress came to take the empty plate, she asked "Ah-yee-ah, Pong-chai dim ah?" Auntie, how is kid Pong?
Oh good, the old lady is not alone in this world! There's some young relation named 'Pong', and she herself seems known in this coffee shop.
It was pleasing to hear that Pong-chai was quite well.
The next time I saw her she was slowly walking up hill, several months later. A medium-sized fluffy dog was trotting along behind her on a leash, stopping now and then to sniff the tree trunks. It hurked down to make a deposit, and the old woman waited patiently for it to finish. When I passed, she had bent down with an empty plastic bag and I heard her remark in amazement, "wah, Pong-chai..... kam do ge lah?!" Wow, so much?!?
Ah, so that's Pong-chai.
I too was amazed.
I didn't think he had it in him.
Capacity!
It wasn't until several weeks ago that I found out where she lived. She came out onto the patio before the sun set. The trees that gave it shade bore clusters of small orange-yellow fruit among the thick leaves.
Ripening loquats. Possibly her husband had planted the tree many years ago when they first bought the building.
Slowly, as if dreaming, she swept the bricks. Pong-chai ambled along behind her, giving every evidence of being a remarkably happy dog.
Then she put the broom aside, stepped over to one of the loquat trees and looked up, admiring the fruit. So golden, so softly glowing. Such pretty canary orbs in the green green shade, puffs of fog adding gauze to the scene.
Yes, truly beautiful.
Her face seemed softened despite her age.
That may have been the glow of slanting light, the haze, and the forty foot distance.
Or not.
"Ah Pong-chai, ney lai pui ngoh ah."
Obediently the dog stood up on his hind legs and held up his forpaws for the woman to grasp. The two of them moved gracefully, semi-dancing, over the bricks.
I don't know what antique melody still played in her mind, but surely her dog could hear it too - it stepped patiently, surefootedly, looking up at her the while.
They had obviously often done this before.
How wonderful for them to be such good companions.
I would like them to enjoy the bougainvillea and loquats together, at the back of their alley, for many more years.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly: LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
I enjoy talking a walk with my pipe at such times, and often end up at the far end of a Nob Hill cul-de-sac which catches southern light, where the Bougainvillea blooms.
[Bougainvillea, more familiar to Spanish speakers as 'Trinitaria' because of the shape of the bloom, thrives on sunlight that hits south-facing areas. The flower itself is small and rather modest, what strikes the eye is the three-leafed collar surrounding it, brilliantly crimson or intensely purple.]
A woman lives there, on the ground floor. She is ancient, and I think it must be her building, because she has the garden, and there are trees there that have lived a long time. Some evenings she comes out and putters around, weeding, watering, or sweeping the little brick patio under her trees.
I observe from my perch beyond the fence, but I doubt that she has ever even noticed that someone is spying on her.
I first saw her a few years ago when I was scarfing down some snackiepoos at a Chinatown bakery. She sat at a table all by herself, with a cup of milk-tea and a slice of strawberry cake. She would fork a bite, masticate thoughtfully, pause, take a sip of tea. Then after another pause, fork another piece. It was hypnotic to watch.
She may have experienced that confection more thoroughly than anybody else could have, as if she sought to grasp the innermost being of the pastry.
I was somewhat worried that it was the only thing she would eat that day. She looked frail, crumpled, small. Her clothes did not betray any great resources, and she was old, old, old. There are many elderly women in Chinatown, widows whose husbands had worked hard all their lives, married late, then died barely into retirement age.
You have to wonder how some of those ladies survive - left alone with straightened circumstances and narrowed horizons, in a country whose particularities are still so foreign.
When the waitress came to take the empty plate, she asked "Ah-yee-ah, Pong-chai dim ah?" Auntie, how is kid Pong?
Oh good, the old lady is not alone in this world! There's some young relation named 'Pong', and she herself seems known in this coffee shop.
It was pleasing to hear that Pong-chai was quite well.
The next time I saw her she was slowly walking up hill, several months later. A medium-sized fluffy dog was trotting along behind her on a leash, stopping now and then to sniff the tree trunks. It hurked down to make a deposit, and the old woman waited patiently for it to finish. When I passed, she had bent down with an empty plastic bag and I heard her remark in amazement, "wah, Pong-chai..... kam do ge lah?!" Wow, so much?!?
Ah, so that's Pong-chai.
I too was amazed.
I didn't think he had it in him.
Capacity!
It wasn't until several weeks ago that I found out where she lived. She came out onto the patio before the sun set. The trees that gave it shade bore clusters of small orange-yellow fruit among the thick leaves.
Ripening loquats. Possibly her husband had planted the tree many years ago when they first bought the building.
Slowly, as if dreaming, she swept the bricks. Pong-chai ambled along behind her, giving every evidence of being a remarkably happy dog.
Then she put the broom aside, stepped over to one of the loquat trees and looked up, admiring the fruit. So golden, so softly glowing. Such pretty canary orbs in the green green shade, puffs of fog adding gauze to the scene.
Yes, truly beautiful.
Her face seemed softened despite her age.
That may have been the glow of slanting light, the haze, and the forty foot distance.
Or not.
"Ah Pong-chai, ney lai pui ngoh ah."
Obediently the dog stood up on his hind legs and held up his forpaws for the woman to grasp. The two of them moved gracefully, semi-dancing, over the bricks.
I don't know what antique melody still played in her mind, but surely her dog could hear it too - it stepped patiently, surefootedly, looking up at her the while.
They had obviously often done this before.
How wonderful for them to be such good companions.
I would like them to enjoy the bougainvillea and loquats together, at the back of their alley, for many more years.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly: LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, July 21, 2011
TAUNTING PERVERTS
A while back I started paying attention to my blog stats and discovered that a whole host of strange people visit this site.
An essay which I had innocently titled 'fat little virgins', because I liked the delicious hint of naughtiness in that name, attracted a steady stream of readers for several years.
That post was about herring as the Dutch prefer it - within its first year of life, before it has ever produced offspring, and while it is storing up fat for winter in the North Atlantic.
The fat content is the key, as it is that which makes it delicious and flavourful.
It has not gone through a reproductive cycle yet.
And it is immature.
Dutch raw herring is, in every way, a "fat little virgin".
Fish-flavoured baby fat. Yum.
PERVERT TAUNTING
[Warning: people who easily blanch may want to leave at this point. It only gets worse.]
Herring was probably not what the wayward visitors who found my blog were actually expecting.
Same goes for the people looking for "sex with horses Netherlands", "I can see your nipples", or "bestiality blogspot".
The nipple phrase steered curious deviants to a post about not speaking fluent French, the equine Dutch post mentioned in passing a loophole in Dutch law, and the word "bestiality" may have cropped up occasionally whenever I was being petulant about some outrage in the rest of the world.
Obviously these folks were immensely disappointed. Because they aren't my target audience, that does not sadden me. As a demographic they do not meet my specs.
But I do very much enjoy teasing them at times.
Which, of course, explains some of my more peculiar posts over the past two years.
[All search criteria eventually pull up something depraved, all subjects eventually attract the attention of a degenerate.
The internet exists for three things: recipes, kitten pictures, and pornography.]
And, on that note............
A MAN WITH TWO PENISES!
Not everyone knows a man with two penises.
But you, dear reader, do.
You know me.
And I know two other men like that too.
One of them is deceased, the other is in Massachusetts.
This I mention in part to titillate the degenerate random reader.
I once owned two penises, I knew the previous owner, and I know who has them now.
The penises were in a very handsome presentation box.
I actually no longer have the penises.
But I should've kept ONE of them as a conversation piece.
虎鞭
Tiger penises are believed by many Chinese to be beneficial for the male sex drive. There is no evidence that they have any effect whatsoever, but the spiky appearance of the feline progenitive organ is fearsomely impressive, and that created the idea.
Cat-family phalli have cartilaginous barbs that "stimulate" the females, and cause the release of ova.
In addition to being a quite objectionable sensation.
They look sexually phenomenal.
Before you start squawking about perverse Chinese male obsessions with sex, let me remind you that Hugh Heffner is a white man, and so is the publisher of Hustler. President John F. Kennedy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Roman Polanski - all as Caucasian as they come.
And Sildenafil was invented in the Western World.
We are quite as twisted as they are.
Just not into the soup.
I should also point out that when you dry a tiger penis, normal tissue reduces far more than cartilage - so there really is no mistaking which animal that thing came from.
You cannot fake a tiger penis.
PROWLING TIGER
When I still lived in North Beach I once helped two women clean up their dad's apartment after he had passed away.
I had known him during his last years of life, and he lived nearby. His daughters were people I had met a few times in Berkeley years before. One of them was the mother of a classmate.
I was the person who discovered the old gentleman on his kitchen floor after the stroke and called the ambulance.
After he got to the emergency room I contacted his family, and went back to the apartment to collect his medication so that the doctors would know what he had been taking. He recovered consciousness a few times over the next two weeks in the hospital, but faded in and out.
The last time he just didn't fade back in again.
Several weeks after the funeral his daughters decided to pack up what should be kept, donate what was not treasured, and clean the apartment thoroughly so that the building could be sold. Their parents had moved in after both women had left home, and had lived there together for two decades. There was a lot of stuff, including everything of their mom that their dad had kept.
They discovered the presentation box of tiger penises in the kitchen cabinet.
I had to explain to them what those things were.
They were surprised and disconcerted. Plus appalled.
Two penises in a box are odd. It is highly unlikely that they were a matched set, but who knows. The presentation box was bright pink, and had butterflies surrounding the clear plastic window that allowed one to inspect the items within.
Butterflies!
The characters 虎鞭 were printed on in gold, so I know that it was originally intended for that precise penile purpose.
Not just some empty bonbon box re-used.
[Many Chinese will prefer to give two identical items when gifting, because that shows attention to detail and cultural nicety. So a pair of penises in a nice box makes complete sense. But most other precious tonics are also sold in gift-boxes.]
Both women were in their fifties. Neither had ever seen a tiger penis. They knew that many elderly Chinese men were notoriously rampant - but surely not their father?!? Why, it wasn't even that long since their mom had died, and they had always believed that Dad was a decent moral man!
Why would an eighty seven year old widower need sexual tonics?
I pointed out two things to them. The first being a picture of their parents dancing during their fiftieth wedding anniversary several years before, the second being that the presentation box was unopened - there was still a sticker promising two genuine all-natural tiger penises sealing the lid.
And look at how dusty that box is!
The photo of the two old people dancing showed a trim elderly gentleman in a tuxedo holding a slim, petite, elfin looking woman in a skin-tight cheongsam, who had white hair but no wrinkles. Clearly she was one hot mama at sixty seven, why look at that figure!
Was there any reason to believe that their father had been interested in anyone else? What made them think that the old couple had not still felt passion for each other?
If their father had bought the tiger penises (though more than likely they were a gift from a friend), it may have been simply so that he could keep up with his wife. In the photo she looked like she was still quite lively.
The suggestion that their mom and dad remained madly in lust with each other into old age elicited loud groans from both of them.
Not everyone is comfortable with the idea that their parents are sexual beings.
But they conceded it was possible. Likely even. Shudder.
And it would explain why the seal on the box was unbroken.
The old gentleman hadn't needed any tiger-penis soup after his wife died.
When they wanted to throw the leathery things away I argued passionately that it would be a sin! Those things are expensive! Precious even, especially now that you cannot get them anymore. It was illegal to sell tiger penises, had been for several years.
They just weren't available at any price, and it would be such a horrid waste!
A number of local herbalists were busted because they didn't know the law.
Don't throw away the penises, just find someone who can use them.
Re-gift the penises! Someone will want them!
The box was set aside.
TALKATIVE DRAGON
As we continued sorting and packing up stuff, one of them remarked that the tiger penises reminded her of the time she discovered a vibrator in her daughter's room. She had never seen one of those things before either, but because of what it looks like, one cannot mistake the purpose. When her daughter came home during spring break, she confronted the young woman.
Why did she have something like that? Was she that sex-crazed that she had to have it?
Was there something physically abnormal about the girl?
Did she really need that horrid thing?!?
"Of course not. And it's broken anyway. That's why I forgot it when I left."
Broken? How on earth does one damage a dildo?
Well, it turned out that there was a machine inside, and moving parts. Eventually things spin out of control. The mother had never thought about that. And there aren't any places where you can get it fixed when it stops working.
That, too, was mildly surprising.
White people were so wasteful!
Chinese people would still find a use for it even if it was broken.
"That's probably why she didn't just throw it out, huh?"
Instead of reacting, the woman happily speculated that sometimes when those things break, wheels inside go flying off violently, splintering the plastic from the inside, so that it looks kinda like a tiger penis! How awful that would be!
Shards, teeth, and sharp cutting edges!
Not at all what you hoped for when you switched it on!
The woman blamed herself for her daughter's unfortunate appetites, as the girl's father was a white man.
"You know, hairy, not like Chinese." I think she was implying that her child had inherited animalistic tendencies from the Caucasian parent, but I didn't press the matter, as I was beginning to suspect that there was more here than met the eye.
Wild animalistic tendencies? Hmmmmmm.
She was glad her daughter was herself married now - the young husband should never even suspect that her daughter had wrecked a vibrator.
But in any case the crazy girl didn't need it anymore, having gotten a large kwailo.
It was a secret mom would carry to her grave. Her lips were sealed.
No one would find out about it.
Ever!
I wondered how many other people she had told about the busted appliance - judging from the older sister's face, she had already heard.
By the pained boredom evident in her expression, probably several times.
That's one secret which is well on its way to becoming a treasured part of family history.
Probably a sacred narrative by now.
Good thing the girl's husband is also white.
There are just some things you don't tell Caucasians.
PUT THIS TO GOOD USE
A few days later both women took me out to lunch to thank me for my attentiveness to their father when he was still alive, and the help I gave them after he had passed on. I had already refused any recompense for my time, they had tried to force payment on me repeatedly out of a sense of obligation, recognizing that I had gone out of my way.
But I didn't need the money. The old gentleman had been a friend.
When lunch ended, one of them handed me a shopping bag, and said "here - I'm sure he would have wanted you to have this".
One doesn't examine gifts in the presence of the giver, so I just thanked her effusively. Too kind!
After they left I looked inside the bag.
It was a presentation box.
I few years later I got rid of the tiger penises. I wasn't going to use them, and I didn't want them hanging around my quarters. Those items were likely to scare visitors or give a completely wrong (i.e. 'nutsoid') impression to any young ladies who might possibly drop by.
Truth be told, they were rather creepy, and I felt guilty keeping the things.
So I gave them to a friend who was moving back to Massachusetts.
Last I heard, they were on display over his mantel.
I'm not surprised he's still a bachelor.
He's kind of perverted.
AFTER WORD
Two or three weeks from now there will be a post on this blog entitled "naked schoolgirls".
That being another search-criterium that pulls in strangers.
It will be entirely safe for work, despite the provocative, nay, zesty! subject.
Pervert taunting - it's what pure-minded young lads like myself excel at.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
An essay which I had innocently titled 'fat little virgins', because I liked the delicious hint of naughtiness in that name, attracted a steady stream of readers for several years.
That post was about herring as the Dutch prefer it - within its first year of life, before it has ever produced offspring, and while it is storing up fat for winter in the North Atlantic.
The fat content is the key, as it is that which makes it delicious and flavourful.
It has not gone through a reproductive cycle yet.
And it is immature.
Dutch raw herring is, in every way, a "fat little virgin".
Fish-flavoured baby fat. Yum.
PERVERT TAUNTING
[Warning: people who easily blanch may want to leave at this point. It only gets worse.]
Herring was probably not what the wayward visitors who found my blog were actually expecting.
Same goes for the people looking for "sex with horses Netherlands", "I can see your nipples", or "bestiality blogspot".
The nipple phrase steered curious deviants to a post about not speaking fluent French, the equine Dutch post mentioned in passing a loophole in Dutch law, and the word "bestiality" may have cropped up occasionally whenever I was being petulant about some outrage in the rest of the world.
Obviously these folks were immensely disappointed. Because they aren't my target audience, that does not sadden me. As a demographic they do not meet my specs.
But I do very much enjoy teasing them at times.
Which, of course, explains some of my more peculiar posts over the past two years.
[All search criteria eventually pull up something depraved, all subjects eventually attract the attention of a degenerate.
The internet exists for three things: recipes, kitten pictures, and pornography.]
And, on that note............
A MAN WITH TWO PENISES!
Not everyone knows a man with two penises.
But you, dear reader, do.
You know me.
And I know two other men like that too.
One of them is deceased, the other is in Massachusetts.
This I mention in part to titillate the degenerate random reader.
I once owned two penises, I knew the previous owner, and I know who has them now.
The penises were in a very handsome presentation box.
I actually no longer have the penises.
But I should've kept ONE of them as a conversation piece.
虎鞭
Tiger penises are believed by many Chinese to be beneficial for the male sex drive. There is no evidence that they have any effect whatsoever, but the spiky appearance of the feline progenitive organ is fearsomely impressive, and that created the idea.
Cat-family phalli have cartilaginous barbs that "stimulate" the females, and cause the release of ova.
In addition to being a quite objectionable sensation.
They look sexually phenomenal.
Before you start squawking about perverse Chinese male obsessions with sex, let me remind you that Hugh Heffner is a white man, and so is the publisher of Hustler. President John F. Kennedy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Roman Polanski - all as Caucasian as they come.
And Sildenafil was invented in the Western World.
We are quite as twisted as they are.
Just not into the soup.
I should also point out that when you dry a tiger penis, normal tissue reduces far more than cartilage - so there really is no mistaking which animal that thing came from.
You cannot fake a tiger penis.
PROWLING TIGER
When I still lived in North Beach I once helped two women clean up their dad's apartment after he had passed away.
I had known him during his last years of life, and he lived nearby. His daughters were people I had met a few times in Berkeley years before. One of them was the mother of a classmate.
I was the person who discovered the old gentleman on his kitchen floor after the stroke and called the ambulance.
After he got to the emergency room I contacted his family, and went back to the apartment to collect his medication so that the doctors would know what he had been taking. He recovered consciousness a few times over the next two weeks in the hospital, but faded in and out.
The last time he just didn't fade back in again.
Several weeks after the funeral his daughters decided to pack up what should be kept, donate what was not treasured, and clean the apartment thoroughly so that the building could be sold. Their parents had moved in after both women had left home, and had lived there together for two decades. There was a lot of stuff, including everything of their mom that their dad had kept.
They discovered the presentation box of tiger penises in the kitchen cabinet.
I had to explain to them what those things were.
They were surprised and disconcerted. Plus appalled.
Two penises in a box are odd. It is highly unlikely that they were a matched set, but who knows. The presentation box was bright pink, and had butterflies surrounding the clear plastic window that allowed one to inspect the items within.
Butterflies!
The characters 虎鞭 were printed on in gold, so I know that it was originally intended for that precise penile purpose.
Not just some empty bonbon box re-used.
[Many Chinese will prefer to give two identical items when gifting, because that shows attention to detail and cultural nicety. So a pair of penises in a nice box makes complete sense. But most other precious tonics are also sold in gift-boxes.]
Both women were in their fifties. Neither had ever seen a tiger penis. They knew that many elderly Chinese men were notoriously rampant - but surely not their father?!? Why, it wasn't even that long since their mom had died, and they had always believed that Dad was a decent moral man!
Why would an eighty seven year old widower need sexual tonics?
I pointed out two things to them. The first being a picture of their parents dancing during their fiftieth wedding anniversary several years before, the second being that the presentation box was unopened - there was still a sticker promising two genuine all-natural tiger penises sealing the lid.
And look at how dusty that box is!
The photo of the two old people dancing showed a trim elderly gentleman in a tuxedo holding a slim, petite, elfin looking woman in a skin-tight cheongsam, who had white hair but no wrinkles. Clearly she was one hot mama at sixty seven, why look at that figure!
Was there any reason to believe that their father had been interested in anyone else? What made them think that the old couple had not still felt passion for each other?
If their father had bought the tiger penises (though more than likely they were a gift from a friend), it may have been simply so that he could keep up with his wife. In the photo she looked like she was still quite lively.
The suggestion that their mom and dad remained madly in lust with each other into old age elicited loud groans from both of them.
Not everyone is comfortable with the idea that their parents are sexual beings.
But they conceded it was possible. Likely even. Shudder.
And it would explain why the seal on the box was unbroken.
The old gentleman hadn't needed any tiger-penis soup after his wife died.
When they wanted to throw the leathery things away I argued passionately that it would be a sin! Those things are expensive! Precious even, especially now that you cannot get them anymore. It was illegal to sell tiger penises, had been for several years.
They just weren't available at any price, and it would be such a horrid waste!
A number of local herbalists were busted because they didn't know the law.
Don't throw away the penises, just find someone who can use them.
Re-gift the penises! Someone will want them!
The box was set aside.
TALKATIVE DRAGON
As we continued sorting and packing up stuff, one of them remarked that the tiger penises reminded her of the time she discovered a vibrator in her daughter's room. She had never seen one of those things before either, but because of what it looks like, one cannot mistake the purpose. When her daughter came home during spring break, she confronted the young woman.
Why did she have something like that? Was she that sex-crazed that she had to have it?
Was there something physically abnormal about the girl?
Did she really need that horrid thing?!?
"Of course not. And it's broken anyway. That's why I forgot it when I left."
Broken? How on earth does one damage a dildo?
Well, it turned out that there was a machine inside, and moving parts. Eventually things spin out of control. The mother had never thought about that. And there aren't any places where you can get it fixed when it stops working.
That, too, was mildly surprising.
White people were so wasteful!
Chinese people would still find a use for it even if it was broken.
"That's probably why she didn't just throw it out, huh?"
Instead of reacting, the woman happily speculated that sometimes when those things break, wheels inside go flying off violently, splintering the plastic from the inside, so that it looks kinda like a tiger penis! How awful that would be!
Shards, teeth, and sharp cutting edges!
Not at all what you hoped for when you switched it on!
The woman blamed herself for her daughter's unfortunate appetites, as the girl's father was a white man.
"You know, hairy, not like Chinese." I think she was implying that her child had inherited animalistic tendencies from the Caucasian parent, but I didn't press the matter, as I was beginning to suspect that there was more here than met the eye.
Wild animalistic tendencies? Hmmmmmm.
She was glad her daughter was herself married now - the young husband should never even suspect that her daughter had wrecked a vibrator.
But in any case the crazy girl didn't need it anymore, having gotten a large kwailo.
It was a secret mom would carry to her grave. Her lips were sealed.
No one would find out about it.
Ever!
I wondered how many other people she had told about the busted appliance - judging from the older sister's face, she had already heard.
By the pained boredom evident in her expression, probably several times.
That's one secret which is well on its way to becoming a treasured part of family history.
Probably a sacred narrative by now.
Good thing the girl's husband is also white.
There are just some things you don't tell Caucasians.
PUT THIS TO GOOD USE
A few days later both women took me out to lunch to thank me for my attentiveness to their father when he was still alive, and the help I gave them after he had passed on. I had already refused any recompense for my time, they had tried to force payment on me repeatedly out of a sense of obligation, recognizing that I had gone out of my way.
But I didn't need the money. The old gentleman had been a friend.
When lunch ended, one of them handed me a shopping bag, and said "here - I'm sure he would have wanted you to have this".
One doesn't examine gifts in the presence of the giver, so I just thanked her effusively. Too kind!
After they left I looked inside the bag.
It was a presentation box.
I few years later I got rid of the tiger penises. I wasn't going to use them, and I didn't want them hanging around my quarters. Those items were likely to scare visitors or give a completely wrong (i.e. 'nutsoid') impression to any young ladies who might possibly drop by.
Truth be told, they were rather creepy, and I felt guilty keeping the things.
So I gave them to a friend who was moving back to Massachusetts.
Last I heard, they were on display over his mantel.
I'm not surprised he's still a bachelor.
He's kind of perverted.
AFTER WORD
Two or three weeks from now there will be a post on this blog entitled "naked schoolgirls".
That being another search-criterium that pulls in strangers.
It will be entirely safe for work, despite the provocative, nay, zesty! subject.
Pervert taunting - it's what pure-minded young lads like myself excel at.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
FEMALE ISSUES
What I actually wanted for lunch was grilled lamb with tzatziki, black olives, tomato, and lemon.
That's not what I had.
Krivaar, which was on Pine Street between Belden Alley and Kearney, closed several months ago. The financial district is bereft.
Lamb got mentioned in many contexts today. Darn that power of suggestion!
While I was having non-lamb that I got somewhere else, I noticed that Vera Pui Chi Ng is, right now, as I write, passionately craving jook to eat.
She wonders if someone can come bring her some.
I feel very deeply for her. We can't always get what we want.
I would bring it, except she's in Holland, I am in San Francisco.
[Jook = 粥. Rice porridge, with varieties such as: 鮑魚滑雞粥 (bao yu kwat kai juk) abalone and chicken jook, 火鴨粥 (fo ngaap juk) jook with roast duck, 生滾蝦球粥 (sang gwan ha kau juk) shrimp curls in jook, 生滾肉片粥 (sang gwan yiuk pien juk) sliced pork jook, 香菇牛崧粥 (heung gu ngau song juk) fragrant mushrooms and pork floss jook, etcetera.
Note: 生滾 (sang gwan), meaning ' fresh boiled', indicating that the shrimp or pork is poached in the heat of the porridge when it is placed in the bowl.
皮蛋: Often jook (粥) will have a preserved egg (pei dan 皮蛋) cut into it, especially if it is made with very lean pork (sau yiuk 瘦肉). Or, more common at home, dried oysters (ho si 蠔豉). The first is called 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pei dan sau yiuk juk), the latter 蠔豉瘦肉粥 (ho si sau yiuk juk). This is absolutely comfort food. 真好食!]
OH, THE HUMANITY!
On an entirely unrelated note, I am the happy recipient of a love letter.
From someone I have never met.
Nor ever will. No intention of.
Especially as I do not know what to call her.
What is 'spam' in Russian?
Is it a surname?
KIRSTIN
She wrote:
I am someone's perfect girl.
I hoard books.
I read news all the time.
I subscribe to several magazines and newspapers, not because I have time to read all of them, but because I like to think I do.
I'm a self-described coffee and cupcake addict.
I'm not an alcoholic, but I do love good beer, good wine and a good time.
I go to plays and musicals because I love them.
I dance because it's fun.
I sing because that's just what I do.
I kind of hate modern art (something my friends like to poke at when they bring me to various museums).
I overanalyze Lost. I sing along to Glee. I wish I worked at the Buy More.
I'm a nerd, in the "Star Wars is awesome, Star Trek is too, and I think I'd like Battlestar Galactica if I ever got around to watching it" way.
I Love Harry Potter. No, seriously. Love. Capital "L."
I'm probably the biggest sap you'll ever meet.
I find kids and babies adorable. I don't want my own any time soon, but I do want them.
I like pretty things. Shoes. Photographs. Pieces of furniture.
I don't like cats because I'm allergic, but I can't wait for the day that I can get a puppy.
I'm living the dream when it comes to my career, but even I know that there's something more I need to strive for. I just have to figure out what that is.
I love baseball and college football, but fair warning, I'm didn't grow up on the East Coast, so I probably don't like your team(s).
I'm not hot. Pretty, sure. Cute, yes. Hot, not so much. And I'm OK with that.
Wow. But for the puppy thing it sounds absolutely charming. I'm serious!
Except........
Her e-mail address is somewhere in France, the "dating is easy" profile link in her missive is hosted in Russia.
So just colour me doubtful.
Now, if she was a petite Cantonese American miss living on Larkin Street or Hyde Street, with a marked fondness for pipes, pipe tobacco, and pipe-smoking men, I might just drop everything and rush to her side.
I would bring extra pipes, in case she wanted to experiment, and extra tobacco.
Everything from blonde Virginia flake and dark VaPers to medium English mixtures and Balkan blends.
Plus extra pipe cleaners.
O yes.
As well as jook.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
That's not what I had.
Krivaar, which was on Pine Street between Belden Alley and Kearney, closed several months ago. The financial district is bereft.
Lamb got mentioned in many contexts today. Darn that power of suggestion!
While I was having non-lamb that I got somewhere else, I noticed that Vera Pui Chi Ng is, right now, as I write, passionately craving jook to eat.
She wonders if someone can come bring her some.
I feel very deeply for her. We can't always get what we want.
I would bring it, except she's in Holland, I am in San Francisco.
[Jook = 粥. Rice porridge, with varieties such as: 鮑魚滑雞粥 (bao yu kwat kai juk) abalone and chicken jook, 火鴨粥 (fo ngaap juk) jook with roast duck, 生滾蝦球粥 (sang gwan ha kau juk) shrimp curls in jook, 生滾肉片粥 (sang gwan yiuk pien juk) sliced pork jook, 香菇牛崧粥 (heung gu ngau song juk) fragrant mushrooms and pork floss jook, etcetera.
Note: 生滾 (sang gwan), meaning ' fresh boiled', indicating that the shrimp or pork is poached in the heat of the porridge when it is placed in the bowl.
皮蛋: Often jook (粥) will have a preserved egg (pei dan 皮蛋) cut into it, especially if it is made with very lean pork (sau yiuk 瘦肉). Or, more common at home, dried oysters (ho si 蠔豉). The first is called 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pei dan sau yiuk juk), the latter 蠔豉瘦肉粥 (ho si sau yiuk juk). This is absolutely comfort food. 真好食!]
OH, THE HUMANITY!
On an entirely unrelated note, I am the happy recipient of a love letter.
From someone I have never met.
Nor ever will. No intention of.
Especially as I do not know what to call her.
What is 'spam' in Russian?
Is it a surname?
KIRSTIN
She wrote:
I am someone's perfect girl.
I hoard books.
I read news all the time.
I subscribe to several magazines and newspapers, not because I have time to read all of them, but because I like to think I do.
I'm a self-described coffee and cupcake addict.
I'm not an alcoholic, but I do love good beer, good wine and a good time.
I go to plays and musicals because I love them.
I dance because it's fun.
I sing because that's just what I do.
I kind of hate modern art (something my friends like to poke at when they bring me to various museums).
I overanalyze Lost. I sing along to Glee. I wish I worked at the Buy More.
I'm a nerd, in the "Star Wars is awesome, Star Trek is too, and I think I'd like Battlestar Galactica if I ever got around to watching it" way.
I Love Harry Potter. No, seriously. Love. Capital "L."
I'm probably the biggest sap you'll ever meet.
I find kids and babies adorable. I don't want my own any time soon, but I do want them.
I like pretty things. Shoes. Photographs. Pieces of furniture.
I don't like cats because I'm allergic, but I can't wait for the day that I can get a puppy.
I'm living the dream when it comes to my career, but even I know that there's something more I need to strive for. I just have to figure out what that is.
I love baseball and college football, but fair warning, I'm didn't grow up on the East Coast, so I probably don't like your team(s).
I'm not hot. Pretty, sure. Cute, yes. Hot, not so much. And I'm OK with that.
Wow. But for the puppy thing it sounds absolutely charming. I'm serious!
Except........
Her e-mail address is somewhere in France, the "dating is easy" profile link in her missive is hosted in Russia.
So just colour me doubtful.
Now, if she was a petite Cantonese American miss living on Larkin Street or Hyde Street, with a marked fondness for pipes, pipe tobacco, and pipe-smoking men, I might just drop everything and rush to her side.
I would bring extra pipes, in case she wanted to experiment, and extra tobacco.
Everything from blonde Virginia flake and dark VaPers to medium English mixtures and Balkan blends.
Plus extra pipe cleaners.
O yes.
As well as jook.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
CANTONESE GIRLS ARE BEAUTIFUL
On one of the forums that I occasionally read, one contributor opined that Cantonese girls look rather ape-like. A very strong opinion.
Needless to say I was intrigued.
Here in San Francisco there are a fair number of Cantonese girls.
I myself live with one, though we haven't been amorously involved in what seems like forever.
[Romance ended in 2010. We're still friends. She's a good person.]
Yes, I've seen Cantonese girls who reminded me of small monkeys.
Just like I've seen black women who resemble the mythical heffalump, and white women who looked like cavemen or trolls.
There are women of every ethnicity who recall the wild man of Borneo.
You know this is true - just think of your in-laws.
On the other hand, anyone who could seriously think my ex had anything in common with a simian would need their eyes examined.
Or poked out - both options are equally recommended.
Many Cantonese girls look absolutely yummy.
There are few Cantonese women who can be called really stunning, however.
The problem is that they look far too intelligent, or their faces betray too much interest or emotion. They're thinking about something, all the wheels are turning.
True classic beauty looks dumb as a brick.
A woman who is eyeing your fine burrito con mole poblano with an expression that says "you gonna eat ALL of that, you greedy bastard?" just doesn't have the requisite vacuity in her face.
Likewise, a Cantonese girl who has just told you "dew sei neige pok gai tau, chau haam ga tsan kam ge sei kwei chui yeh!!!" may look any number of things - pan faced uber-goober isn't it.
[No, I will neither translate, nor ideographically transcribe, that locution.]
The standard idea of beauty includes an uncomplicated expression, certain proportions, and certain hues.
Stupid, curvy, pale.
The hues are acceptable.
The proportions are often quite interesting.
And the expressions?
No Cantonese woman can pretend that her mind is blank. Their own faces betray that there is something going on upstairs, even if it's only "I want some of that lobster, even if I have to KILL the dumb white guy currently hogging the buffet!"
They just aren't very good at looking vacant. That, right there, takes away the classic appeal.
Most men want someone who has the pouty emptiness of Marilyn Monroe, or the steamy mutton-faced sexiness of Brigitte Bardot.
A frown that says that something good better go into the mouth or something blisteringly evil will soon come out frightens many males.
The other great failing of the young Cantonese female is that she just cannot look up adoringly at her hunk. Do you see those pupils, those narrowed eyes? Yes, she's looking up. But she's focused on that hair sticking out his nostril, and planning to yank it out when he falls asleep. She's just waiting.
Either that, or she's thinking "good lord, he looks like a dingo from this angle - is it even worth my while staying around for dinner?"
Cantonese feminine charm lies in looking homicidal, involved, angry, despairing, stubborn, greedy, amused, hungry, or wicked.
Perhaps even con brio spewing a train of invective that would make a dead man blanch.
These girls are the descendants of grave robbers, smugglers, pirates, and incendiarists. Their ancestors moved south into Lingnan to escape blandness.
[As well as to get away from taxes, the salt-gabelle, the draft, and snooty northerners.]
They just don't have it in them to look 'beautiful'.
Give them a good time (and something nice to eat), and they'll sparkle.
Bore them, and you'll see just how ugly a woman can get.
Unless she's happily speculating about trading you in for a whole roast pig, which is when she will look her dreamiest best.
[So what do those sweet seductive bedroom eyes mean? Either you've pleased her no end, and she thinks you're the bees' knees and the cat's miaow, OR she's happily calculating your net worth based on pounds of stupid male flesh and harvestable organs.
Finding out which it is, is up to you. Good luck.]
If they look ape-like, that may just be because they're thinking of jamming a banana where your sun don't shine.
A hard unripe banana.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Needless to say I was intrigued.
Here in San Francisco there are a fair number of Cantonese girls.
I myself live with one, though we haven't been amorously involved in what seems like forever.
[Romance ended in 2010. We're still friends. She's a good person.]
Yes, I've seen Cantonese girls who reminded me of small monkeys.
Just like I've seen black women who resemble the mythical heffalump, and white women who looked like cavemen or trolls.
There are women of every ethnicity who recall the wild man of Borneo.
You know this is true - just think of your in-laws.
On the other hand, anyone who could seriously think my ex had anything in common with a simian would need their eyes examined.
Or poked out - both options are equally recommended.
Many Cantonese girls look absolutely yummy.
There are few Cantonese women who can be called really stunning, however.
The problem is that they look far too intelligent, or their faces betray too much interest or emotion. They're thinking about something, all the wheels are turning.
True classic beauty looks dumb as a brick.
A woman who is eyeing your fine burrito con mole poblano with an expression that says "you gonna eat ALL of that, you greedy bastard?" just doesn't have the requisite vacuity in her face.
Likewise, a Cantonese girl who has just told you "dew sei neige pok gai tau, chau haam ga tsan kam ge sei kwei chui yeh!!!" may look any number of things - pan faced uber-goober isn't it.
[No, I will neither translate, nor ideographically transcribe, that locution.]
The standard idea of beauty includes an uncomplicated expression, certain proportions, and certain hues.
Stupid, curvy, pale.
The hues are acceptable.
The proportions are often quite interesting.
And the expressions?
No Cantonese woman can pretend that her mind is blank. Their own faces betray that there is something going on upstairs, even if it's only "I want some of that lobster, even if I have to KILL the dumb white guy currently hogging the buffet!"
They just aren't very good at looking vacant. That, right there, takes away the classic appeal.
Most men want someone who has the pouty emptiness of Marilyn Monroe, or the steamy mutton-faced sexiness of Brigitte Bardot.
A frown that says that something good better go into the mouth or something blisteringly evil will soon come out frightens many males.
The other great failing of the young Cantonese female is that she just cannot look up adoringly at her hunk. Do you see those pupils, those narrowed eyes? Yes, she's looking up. But she's focused on that hair sticking out his nostril, and planning to yank it out when he falls asleep. She's just waiting.
Either that, or she's thinking "good lord, he looks like a dingo from this angle - is it even worth my while staying around for dinner?"
Cantonese feminine charm lies in looking homicidal, involved, angry, despairing, stubborn, greedy, amused, hungry, or wicked.
Perhaps even con brio spewing a train of invective that would make a dead man blanch.
These girls are the descendants of grave robbers, smugglers, pirates, and incendiarists. Their ancestors moved south into Lingnan to escape blandness.
[As well as to get away from taxes, the salt-gabelle, the draft, and snooty northerners.]
They just don't have it in them to look 'beautiful'.
Give them a good time (and something nice to eat), and they'll sparkle.
Bore them, and you'll see just how ugly a woman can get.
Unless she's happily speculating about trading you in for a whole roast pig, which is when she will look her dreamiest best.
[So what do those sweet seductive bedroom eyes mean? Either you've pleased her no end, and she thinks you're the bees' knees and the cat's miaow, OR she's happily calculating your net worth based on pounds of stupid male flesh and harvestable organs.
Finding out which it is, is up to you. Good luck.]
If they look ape-like, that may just be because they're thinking of jamming a banana where your sun don't shine.
A hard unripe banana.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, April 02, 2011
THE ENGINEER'S DAUGHTER
Not having eaten all day, at around six o'clock I realized that the headache was probably due to a lack of food. Whenever I'm at the office, I swill tea. There's no actual nutrition in tea.
You may already know this.
I keep discovering it.
ALWAYS BE WILLING TO TRY SOMETHING NEW
I stopped at a restaurant in Chinatown that I had seen from the bus a while back. It looked interesting. Pink tablecloths - why would so small and obviously unpretentious an eatery have pink tablecloths?
It suggested a woman's touch.
One dish on the menu caught my eye. Nothing special, the Chinese name was just a listing of ingredients, like so many Chinese names on menus.
Suut choi yiuk si tong mai fan (雪菜肉絲湯米粉). Which means snow vegetable meat shreds soup vermicelli.
It's a very easy dish, being thin rice thread noodles in soup flavoured with preserved cabbage and slivered pork. All you need is a pot of hot water in which to heat the noodles, a pan in which to parch the rinsed cabbage and to sizzle the slivered pork with a few drops of oil. Drain the noodles and place them in a bowl. Pour stock into the pan to seethe, then decant the stock, preserved cabbage, and pork slivers onto the noodles. Garnish with chopped chives. So simple!
At the first mouthful, a memory came back that told me why it had appealed to me.
REMEMBERING A BOWL OF NOODLES
Even though Berkeley today is populated by rather unpleasant people with hard attitudes, it used to be a nice place. I lived there at that time, as did many of my friends. And also one of my customers, an engineer who arranged for drafting assignments from the company in San Francisco where he worked.
Whenever I came to the office, if it was late in the day he'd suggest that I catch a ride back to Berkeley with him.
We'd talk. Not just business, but also other things. Our lives, our families.
He had a daughter who was studying at Berkeley, a nice girl I had seen once or twice. She always looked serious, except for her eyes.
She had warm eyes, friendly eyes.
The charm of her eyes complimented the stubborn firmness that one read in her lips.
Occasionally he invited me in. If we smoked we would do it just outside the kitchen door, to keep Yun-Yun from being bothered by the smell. Since his wife died, he told me, he never smoked in the house anymore. One shouldn't indulge in tobacco around children, especially girls - one wants them to grow up to be proper ladies.
Boys, not so much.
Males very rarely become ladies. Proper or otherwise.
His wife had passed away when Yun-Yun was thirteen. Both father and daughter had known that it was going to happen, which of course didn't make it easier. The little girl had already started preparing the family meals a year previously, but after her mother died she really threw herself into taking care of the house and making sure that a warm meal awaited her dad when he came home from work. "I didn't understand it at the time, but she wanted to make sure that I would come back to her every day. She must've felt deserted after Ling died." For several years the girl prepared food for her father and bought the groceries, in addition to doing her homework and excelling at school.
It had not been easy.
"So much for one small person. I should've realized that she was growing up too fast."
He told me that during the final years of high school, Yun-Yun was always serious, grimly serious. She graduated with honours, but she didn't have many friends at school, and nobody asked her to the prom.
That summer he took a trip across the country with her, and somewhere east of Chicago she finally unwound.
He discovered that the little girl who always laughed when last he really saw her had become a young woman who could hardly even smile.
During the rest of the trip they talked. They didn't really communicate, but they talked. A lot.
Doing so was good for both of them.
Her eyes started smiling again, but not her mouth.
The mouth still reflected an iron will, but now at least there was softness in her eyes.
The relationship between father and daughter changed during that trip.
Things were better once they got back to Berkeley, the sadness of several years had healed.
In her first years of college she still insisted on doing all the cooking. "Really, she was doing too much, I tried to stop her, but she was so determined". Whenever he could he would suggest that instead they go out to eat, but it was very difficult to get her to give up the task that she had so fiercely taken upon herself. She was going to be the woman of the house to replace the wife he had lost, no matter what. She wanted more than anything else that he should always have a happy home.
The stubborn young lady who ruled his household made it a little difficult for him to have a social life. If he came home late, she'd be sitting at the table looking unhappy, waiting for him with the food that had grown cold.
She wouldn't pick up her own chopsticks till he started eating.
One day he asked her would she mind dreadfully if he went on a date with a woman he had met. Yun-Yun was flabbergasted - "but, but, you're not SUPPOSED to meet any women!" Then she realized what she said, and stuttered "no, of course, go, please go..... shall I leave something to eat for you on the kitchen counter?"
Thereafter, once or twice a week, he would tell Yun-Yun not to wait up for him, he'd be home late. In her third year of college it became three or four evenings a week.
Regularly he'd tell Yun-Yun that Sally sent her regards. Occasionally Sally would send along a book or something nice to eat for Yun-Yun.
Sally didn't want him to forget that he was a father who had a wonderful daughter.
He told Yun-Yun that Sally lived in San Jose, that's why they hadn't met yet. But maybe sometime, maybe soon.
"But you're not supposed to meet any women!"
In so far as his daughter and his girl-friend communicated, it was through him.
"Sally hopes you like that sweater she sent you." And Yun-Yun told him to please assure Sally it was a very nice sweater, and asked him to give her a box of chocolates that Yun-Yun had gotten for her in return.
At Christmas, Sally and Yun-Yun would exchange gifts that he would deliver to each of them, and send each other charming little thank you notes.
What he never told Yun-Yun was that Sally didn't exist.
His "dating" was merely a stratagem to keep Yun-Yun from spending so much time fixing dinner, and then waiting for him to come home before having anything to eat herself. On the weekends he would do housework, just to keep her from doing it. "I had to vacuum really well, and dust all the surfaces thoroughly - if I missed a spot, she'd find it and do it all over just to make sure the place was clean". It gave him time to spend with her. He didn't understand his daughter, and he worried at her lack of a social life. Surely there were other people, students, that she could be friends with? She shouldn't be alone all the time.
But she seemed sort of happy, more so when he was around.
She graduated, and went straight into the masters program. Didn't make a big deal of it, didn't even take a break, didn't attend the ceremony with all the other graduates. He had wanted to attend her graduation, unfortunately she hadn't even mentioned when it was, and he hadn't thought to find out on his own.
He was disappointed that it had come to this, but in himself, not her.
He was very proud of her.
Over the next year he broke off his relationship with the fictitious Sally.
Yun-Yun now allowed him to do the cooking on occasion, she thought it took his mind off his failed love life. And she was very happy that he was coming home early more often. It was good for him to be home.
You can probably see where this is going, can't you?
He fell in love with a curvaceous blonde woman in her thirties who worked at the same company. She lived in Oakland, and he started offering her rides back in the evening. Occasionally they'd go out and have a drink together, or sometimes a steak dinner. He would call Yun-Yun early in the day to tell her he had to work a few hours extra that evening, please don't worry.
There would always be food waiting for him when he got home, but Yun-Yun herself would have already eaten.
She ate a little bit with him to keep him company, while he manfully tackled his second dinner of the day.
It was good, it was very good.
Little Ah-Yun had become a damn fine cook.
He told me all this while crossing the Bay Bridge, over a period of months.
On a day when I dropped off finished work, and his girlfriend needed to leave early, he and I arrived in Berkeley well before six o'clock. Yun-Yun wasn't expecting him back so soon. She hadn't started cooking yet, and was startled when we walked in. A bit flustered, too. She blamed herself for not having anything prepared, and would have rushed out to buy something, but he calmed her down, said he had eaten a late lunch, don't fuss, well maybe just something simple - honestly - just noodles would be fine!
I too wasn't hungry, and please, she shouldn't worry.
She gave in, but insisted that I have a bite also.
Ten minutes later her dad and I were slurping down rice-threads with pork and parched snow-vegetable in hot soup.
She had gone back upstairs and was studying again.
Whenever I visited, which wasn't very often because I also had other projects in other cities, she'd make me stay and have noodles with him.
I think I had the salted vegetable and pork combo maybe five or six times - it was one of the quickest and easiest things to prepare, and really, she was being too kind, we didn't want her to go to any trouble - "noodles will be just fine".
Later, things changed. CAD ('Computer Aided Drafting') took-off, and within months many draftsmen were out of work. A computer yielded cleaner work, faster, more accurately, and instead of needing an entire department, one man could do it all on screen as per instruction, with multiple copies and corrections as required.
There wasn't enough work to go around, and I stopped drafting altogether.
I still saw both of them occasionally, but after I moved to San Francisco it was less and less.
When she got the Master's Degree her dad was there. It was the happiest day of his life.
He married the blonde after Yun-Yun moved to the East Coast to get her PHD.
I think they live in San Diego now.
We've been out of touch for a very long time.
THE A-1 RESTAURANT
It's a small place - one round table for parties, and half a dozen tables that seat four. The people who run it speak Toishanese, but also understand Cantonese. The waitress was a bit startled that I knew the Chinese characters on the menu, she made me repeat my order just to be sure.
They do a number of typical Cantonese-American restaurant items, including noodle soups and won ton.
They also make various claypot rice dishes, which are probably too much for one person to eat - it might be best to also order a vegetable for balance and contrast.
But they're proud of their claypot rice dishes, so those are probably very good.
華記小館
779 Clay Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-398-7918
I believe they opened in 1996 - there's an article from the 金山時報 heralding their business framed on the wall, but all I could make out from across the room was the headline.
The pork shreds snow vegetable soup with vermicelli was good, satisfying.
Just like the last time I had it in Berkeley, I burned my lips.
It had been so long I had forgotten that.
Ordering a claypot rice dish will have to wait till I find a person with warm eyes, friendly eyes.
Till then, soup. Mostly soup.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
You may already know this.
I keep discovering it.
ALWAYS BE WILLING TO TRY SOMETHING NEW
I stopped at a restaurant in Chinatown that I had seen from the bus a while back. It looked interesting. Pink tablecloths - why would so small and obviously unpretentious an eatery have pink tablecloths?
It suggested a woman's touch.
One dish on the menu caught my eye. Nothing special, the Chinese name was just a listing of ingredients, like so many Chinese names on menus.
Suut choi yiuk si tong mai fan (雪菜肉絲湯米粉). Which means snow vegetable meat shreds soup vermicelli.
It's a very easy dish, being thin rice thread noodles in soup flavoured with preserved cabbage and slivered pork. All you need is a pot of hot water in which to heat the noodles, a pan in which to parch the rinsed cabbage and to sizzle the slivered pork with a few drops of oil. Drain the noodles and place them in a bowl. Pour stock into the pan to seethe, then decant the stock, preserved cabbage, and pork slivers onto the noodles. Garnish with chopped chives. So simple!
At the first mouthful, a memory came back that told me why it had appealed to me.
REMEMBERING A BOWL OF NOODLES
Even though Berkeley today is populated by rather unpleasant people with hard attitudes, it used to be a nice place. I lived there at that time, as did many of my friends. And also one of my customers, an engineer who arranged for drafting assignments from the company in San Francisco where he worked.
Whenever I came to the office, if it was late in the day he'd suggest that I catch a ride back to Berkeley with him.
We'd talk. Not just business, but also other things. Our lives, our families.
He had a daughter who was studying at Berkeley, a nice girl I had seen once or twice. She always looked serious, except for her eyes.
She had warm eyes, friendly eyes.
The charm of her eyes complimented the stubborn firmness that one read in her lips.
Occasionally he invited me in. If we smoked we would do it just outside the kitchen door, to keep Yun-Yun from being bothered by the smell. Since his wife died, he told me, he never smoked in the house anymore. One shouldn't indulge in tobacco around children, especially girls - one wants them to grow up to be proper ladies.
Boys, not so much.
Males very rarely become ladies. Proper or otherwise.
His wife had passed away when Yun-Yun was thirteen. Both father and daughter had known that it was going to happen, which of course didn't make it easier. The little girl had already started preparing the family meals a year previously, but after her mother died she really threw herself into taking care of the house and making sure that a warm meal awaited her dad when he came home from work. "I didn't understand it at the time, but she wanted to make sure that I would come back to her every day. She must've felt deserted after Ling died." For several years the girl prepared food for her father and bought the groceries, in addition to doing her homework and excelling at school.
It had not been easy.
"So much for one small person. I should've realized that she was growing up too fast."
He told me that during the final years of high school, Yun-Yun was always serious, grimly serious. She graduated with honours, but she didn't have many friends at school, and nobody asked her to the prom.
That summer he took a trip across the country with her, and somewhere east of Chicago she finally unwound.
He discovered that the little girl who always laughed when last he really saw her had become a young woman who could hardly even smile.
During the rest of the trip they talked. They didn't really communicate, but they talked. A lot.
Doing so was good for both of them.
Her eyes started smiling again, but not her mouth.
The mouth still reflected an iron will, but now at least there was softness in her eyes.
The relationship between father and daughter changed during that trip.
Things were better once they got back to Berkeley, the sadness of several years had healed.
In her first years of college she still insisted on doing all the cooking. "Really, she was doing too much, I tried to stop her, but she was so determined". Whenever he could he would suggest that instead they go out to eat, but it was very difficult to get her to give up the task that she had so fiercely taken upon herself. She was going to be the woman of the house to replace the wife he had lost, no matter what. She wanted more than anything else that he should always have a happy home.
The stubborn young lady who ruled his household made it a little difficult for him to have a social life. If he came home late, she'd be sitting at the table looking unhappy, waiting for him with the food that had grown cold.
She wouldn't pick up her own chopsticks till he started eating.
One day he asked her would she mind dreadfully if he went on a date with a woman he had met. Yun-Yun was flabbergasted - "but, but, you're not SUPPOSED to meet any women!" Then she realized what she said, and stuttered "no, of course, go, please go..... shall I leave something to eat for you on the kitchen counter?"
Thereafter, once or twice a week, he would tell Yun-Yun not to wait up for him, he'd be home late. In her third year of college it became three or four evenings a week.
Regularly he'd tell Yun-Yun that Sally sent her regards. Occasionally Sally would send along a book or something nice to eat for Yun-Yun.
Sally didn't want him to forget that he was a father who had a wonderful daughter.
He told Yun-Yun that Sally lived in San Jose, that's why they hadn't met yet. But maybe sometime, maybe soon.
"But you're not supposed to meet any women!"
In so far as his daughter and his girl-friend communicated, it was through him.
"Sally hopes you like that sweater she sent you." And Yun-Yun told him to please assure Sally it was a very nice sweater, and asked him to give her a box of chocolates that Yun-Yun had gotten for her in return.
At Christmas, Sally and Yun-Yun would exchange gifts that he would deliver to each of them, and send each other charming little thank you notes.
What he never told Yun-Yun was that Sally didn't exist.
His "dating" was merely a stratagem to keep Yun-Yun from spending so much time fixing dinner, and then waiting for him to come home before having anything to eat herself. On the weekends he would do housework, just to keep her from doing it. "I had to vacuum really well, and dust all the surfaces thoroughly - if I missed a spot, she'd find it and do it all over just to make sure the place was clean". It gave him time to spend with her. He didn't understand his daughter, and he worried at her lack of a social life. Surely there were other people, students, that she could be friends with? She shouldn't be alone all the time.
But she seemed sort of happy, more so when he was around.
She graduated, and went straight into the masters program. Didn't make a big deal of it, didn't even take a break, didn't attend the ceremony with all the other graduates. He had wanted to attend her graduation, unfortunately she hadn't even mentioned when it was, and he hadn't thought to find out on his own.
He was disappointed that it had come to this, but in himself, not her.
He was very proud of her.
Over the next year he broke off his relationship with the fictitious Sally.
Yun-Yun now allowed him to do the cooking on occasion, she thought it took his mind off his failed love life. And she was very happy that he was coming home early more often. It was good for him to be home.
You can probably see where this is going, can't you?
He fell in love with a curvaceous blonde woman in her thirties who worked at the same company. She lived in Oakland, and he started offering her rides back in the evening. Occasionally they'd go out and have a drink together, or sometimes a steak dinner. He would call Yun-Yun early in the day to tell her he had to work a few hours extra that evening, please don't worry.
There would always be food waiting for him when he got home, but Yun-Yun herself would have already eaten.
She ate a little bit with him to keep him company, while he manfully tackled his second dinner of the day.
It was good, it was very good.
Little Ah-Yun had become a damn fine cook.
He told me all this while crossing the Bay Bridge, over a period of months.
On a day when I dropped off finished work, and his girlfriend needed to leave early, he and I arrived in Berkeley well before six o'clock. Yun-Yun wasn't expecting him back so soon. She hadn't started cooking yet, and was startled when we walked in. A bit flustered, too. She blamed herself for not having anything prepared, and would have rushed out to buy something, but he calmed her down, said he had eaten a late lunch, don't fuss, well maybe just something simple - honestly - just noodles would be fine!
I too wasn't hungry, and please, she shouldn't worry.
She gave in, but insisted that I have a bite also.
Ten minutes later her dad and I were slurping down rice-threads with pork and parched snow-vegetable in hot soup.
She had gone back upstairs and was studying again.
Whenever I visited, which wasn't very often because I also had other projects in other cities, she'd make me stay and have noodles with him.
I think I had the salted vegetable and pork combo maybe five or six times - it was one of the quickest and easiest things to prepare, and really, she was being too kind, we didn't want her to go to any trouble - "noodles will be just fine".
Later, things changed. CAD ('Computer Aided Drafting') took-off, and within months many draftsmen were out of work. A computer yielded cleaner work, faster, more accurately, and instead of needing an entire department, one man could do it all on screen as per instruction, with multiple copies and corrections as required.
There wasn't enough work to go around, and I stopped drafting altogether.
I still saw both of them occasionally, but after I moved to San Francisco it was less and less.
When she got the Master's Degree her dad was there. It was the happiest day of his life.
He married the blonde after Yun-Yun moved to the East Coast to get her PHD.
I think they live in San Diego now.
We've been out of touch for a very long time.
THE A-1 RESTAURANT
It's a small place - one round table for parties, and half a dozen tables that seat four. The people who run it speak Toishanese, but also understand Cantonese. The waitress was a bit startled that I knew the Chinese characters on the menu, she made me repeat my order just to be sure.
They do a number of typical Cantonese-American restaurant items, including noodle soups and won ton.
They also make various claypot rice dishes, which are probably too much for one person to eat - it might be best to also order a vegetable for balance and contrast.
But they're proud of their claypot rice dishes, so those are probably very good.
華記小館
779 Clay Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-398-7918
I believe they opened in 1996 - there's an article from the 金山時報 heralding their business framed on the wall, but all I could make out from across the room was the headline.
The pork shreds snow vegetable soup with vermicelli was good, satisfying.
Just like the last time I had it in Berkeley, I burned my lips.
It had been so long I had forgotten that.
Ordering a claypot rice dish will have to wait till I find a person with warm eyes, friendly eyes.
Till then, soup. Mostly soup.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
REACTIONS TO READERS ON CHINATOWN WOMEN PART ONE
Readers who tuned in to this site yesterday expecting more of my neuroses will know that I guestposted on Crystal Tao's blog. My article dealt with the circumstances of women in Chinatown - you'll have to read the post to know what I said.
[THIS POST: 唐人街的女人 - 第一章. Don't worry, it's in English.]
There were a gratifying number of commenters.
I crosspost my responses here.
To Ziccawei: Just Cantonese women, particularly the ones in SF Chinatown – though it also applies to Cantonese women in most inner-city C’towns elsewhere. There are rather wide cultural and social variations between regions in China, and even in the next province over (Fujian), things are quite different.
To HongBaoNaLai: Yes, there are geeky boys there. Dysfunctionality strikes both genders. Not really my issue, nor particularly a concern of LLC. And as far as girls with BMW/Benz – which Chinatown? Certainly not in SF Chinatown - there’s no where to park that thing, and most families living packed in a two-room walk-up don’t have a garage (they'd put the kids or grandma there if they did). If Chinese girls have their own condos, they sure as heck ain’t living in this part of SF, probably not even the Sunset or Richmond districts. For a large number of people living in Chinatown / Northbeach, circumstances are tight - 欏朝唔得晚.
Perhaps you’re speaking of Philippino-Chinese or well-educated Taiwanese immigrants in Monterey Park.
To Casey O’Rourke: Often somewhere between ‘good riddance’ and ‘you never should have been born’. Though there are a few who are genuinely pleased as punch that A) she’s found someone she loves, and B) he’s an interesting person with a great sense of humour (he’ll need that when dealing with some of the relatives).
To Wandering American: You are a very lucky man. Mazel tov!
To HongBaoNaLai again: Travelled in Malaysia before I learned Cantonese – whenever I tried speaking Hokkienhwee or Bahasa Melayu, they looked at me funny. Turns out they all have aunties who talked just like that.
You might get a kick out of this post:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-know-beng.html
To Jay K.: 嘩, 你食咗啲葡萄好酸嘅咩!
To Ziccawei: 我真想知道, 你家庭嘅人係乜地方嘅咩?
To S.K.Y: What you described is not really unusual. Both SF Chinatown and Oakland Chinatown have mental health clinics and social workers who deal with high rates of suicidal tendencies and family issues. I hope your friend finds happiness and stability.
* * * * * *
You'll have to go over to the actual post on LoveLoveChina to read what the commenters wrote. My responses may not make much sense otherwise.
And of course I am keen to see your feedback there as well.
Especially when Part Two gets published.
NOTE: There was one reader to whom I really wanted to say "Not entirely sure you’re human. Please stay away from women".
But I chose to be diplomatic.
Brownie points if you can guess who it is.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
[THIS POST: 唐人街的女人 - 第一章. Don't worry, it's in English.]
There were a gratifying number of commenters.
I crosspost my responses here.
To Ziccawei: Just Cantonese women, particularly the ones in SF Chinatown – though it also applies to Cantonese women in most inner-city C’towns elsewhere. There are rather wide cultural and social variations between regions in China, and even in the next province over (Fujian), things are quite different.
To HongBaoNaLai: Yes, there are geeky boys there. Dysfunctionality strikes both genders. Not really my issue, nor particularly a concern of LLC. And as far as girls with BMW/Benz – which Chinatown? Certainly not in SF Chinatown - there’s no where to park that thing, and most families living packed in a two-room walk-up don’t have a garage (they'd put the kids or grandma there if they did). If Chinese girls have their own condos, they sure as heck ain’t living in this part of SF, probably not even the Sunset or Richmond districts. For a large number of people living in Chinatown / Northbeach, circumstances are tight - 欏朝唔得晚.
Perhaps you’re speaking of Philippino-Chinese or well-educated Taiwanese immigrants in Monterey Park.
To Casey O’Rourke: Often somewhere between ‘good riddance’ and ‘you never should have been born’. Though there are a few who are genuinely pleased as punch that A) she’s found someone she loves, and B) he’s an interesting person with a great sense of humour (he’ll need that when dealing with some of the relatives).
To Wandering American: You are a very lucky man. Mazel tov!
To HongBaoNaLai again: Travelled in Malaysia before I learned Cantonese – whenever I tried speaking Hokkienhwee or Bahasa Melayu, they looked at me funny. Turns out they all have aunties who talked just like that.
You might get a kick out of this post:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-know-beng.html
To Jay K.: 嘩, 你食咗啲葡萄好酸嘅咩!
To Ziccawei: 我真想知道, 你家庭嘅人係乜地方嘅咩?
To S.K.Y: What you described is not really unusual. Both SF Chinatown and Oakland Chinatown have mental health clinics and social workers who deal with high rates of suicidal tendencies and family issues. I hope your friend finds happiness and stability.
* * * * * *
You'll have to go over to the actual post on LoveLoveChina to read what the commenters wrote. My responses may not make much sense otherwise.
And of course I am keen to see your feedback there as well.
Especially when Part Two gets published.
NOTE: There was one reader to whom I really wanted to say "Not entirely sure you’re human. Please stay away from women".
But I chose to be diplomatic.
Brownie points if you can guess who it is.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, January 24, 2011
CHINATOWN WOMEN - PART ONE
Today I am guestposting elsewhere. No, not on any of the usual sites which you might suspect, but on LoveLoveChina, which is Crystal Tao's blog.
Miss Tao describes herself as "a common Chongqing girl who believes that her blog can help foreign men to understand Chinese girls better".
In other words, it's a guide for the perplexed.
Regarding Cantonese girls in particular, I myself am somewhat less perplexed now than I once was.
Or just a lot more opinionated, and possibly even full of hot air.
Feel free to tell me which of those after reading what I wrote.
TONG YAN KAI DIK NOEI YAN - DAI YAT JEUNG
The post in question is this:
http://www.lovelovechina.com/girls/chinatown-women-part-i/
Chinatown Women - Part I (唐人街的女人 - 第一章)
[Tempting quotes: "Consider her family, what they are is what you will have to deal with, and she resembles her mother..."- "all women end up like their mothers" -"things that she did wrong".]
I also encourage you to read the other articles on Crystal Tao's blog - one which is particularly interesting is about Chinese men and what they are like as husbands.
Even if you're not Chinese, you may recognize yourself.
Her post about mah jong also struck a particular chord. A woman I knew a long time ago in South-East Asia was always furious whenever her husband went off to play mahjong with the guys.
"Men would always find something more interesting than their wives"
What she didn't realize was that when he was on a business trip to Taiwan or Singapore, the mahjong addiction kept him from being dragged to massage parlours or girlie-bars by the people he was visiting. Sure, he could always have found something more interesting than his wife - but mahjong kept him loyal.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Miss Tao describes herself as "a common Chongqing girl who believes that her blog can help foreign men to understand Chinese girls better".
In other words, it's a guide for the perplexed.
Regarding Cantonese girls in particular, I myself am somewhat less perplexed now than I once was.
Or just a lot more opinionated, and possibly even full of hot air.
Feel free to tell me which of those after reading what I wrote.
TONG YAN KAI DIK NOEI YAN - DAI YAT JEUNG
The post in question is this:
http://www.lovelovechina.com/girls/chinatown-women-part-i/
Chinatown Women - Part I (唐人街的女人 - 第一章)
[Tempting quotes: "Consider her family, what they are is what you will have to deal with, and she resembles her mother..."- "all women end up like their mothers" -"things that she did wrong".]
I also encourage you to read the other articles on Crystal Tao's blog - one which is particularly interesting is about Chinese men and what they are like as husbands.
Even if you're not Chinese, you may recognize yourself.
Her post about mah jong also struck a particular chord. A woman I knew a long time ago in South-East Asia was always furious whenever her husband went off to play mahjong with the guys.
"Men would always find something more interesting than their wives"
What she didn't realize was that when he was on a business trip to Taiwan or Singapore, the mahjong addiction kept him from being dragged to massage parlours or girlie-bars by the people he was visiting. Sure, he could always have found something more interesting than his wife - but mahjong kept him loyal.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
AN OBSTINATE WOMAN, FAR ABOVE RUBIES
Often a reader adds perspective to something I wrote. It's something I've gotten used to over the years, and obviously it is one of the things that makes blogging worthwhile.
It isn't always about having my own soapbox and screaming mad nonsense into the void.
Today a reader added her comment underneath something I posted a while back, showing a completely different point of view; one which I myself have not particularly stressed - it is somewhat outside of my own perspective, as you will understand - but which needs to be given a place in the spotlight.
[Underneath this post: http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2010/10/cantonese-daughters-and-their-moms.html In which I explain certain things about Cantonese women that have also been detailed by many other writers - an entire passel of Chinese-American female authors in particular.]
NINJARINA WROTE:
"I'm a Cantonese-American raised by Mainlanders and thankfully, my parents were and are loving people. My mother is one of those crazy bitches but unfortunately for her, I inherited her obstinance. No one could ever convince her she couldn't do something and it's more or less the same for me.
I consider myself extremely lucky b/c my mother found a man that is willing to put up with her shit and she held onto him for dear life. My father found a woman who would be fiercely protective of her family and extremely driven to succeed despite her odds. Together, they are the cutest old Chinese couple you'll ever meet. Many times, I wonder if in the case of immigrant wives, that they spend so much time and effort trying to live out the lives their circumstances could not afford them b/c they are so unfulfilled in both their working and personal lives.
Out of all of my aunts and uncles (blood related and otherwise), I can say with certainty that my parents are the most well-adjusted and consequently, my brother and I, while not particularly financially or even academically successful, are as my mother said, "good, decent people." It is the highest compliment she could have ever given us and she has told us this repeatedly. They helped put us through college and never demanded that we study something we didn't want (although we were not so subtly pushed toward it), just that we could find work and lead stable lives after we graduated. And isn't that the whole point of going to college anyway? They loved us SO much, they didn't hold it against us that we BOTH got our degrees in political science and we both decided to abort the path to law school. I'm getting ready to go into a physician's assistant program (on my own accord) and my brother is on his way to getting a MSW (Masters in Social Work).
I hope that my story cheers you up. My mother may have done some of those terrible things that Cantonese mothers do and I will NEVER agree that those methods are anything less than abuse (this really gets my mother's goat, not being able to tell me "I told you so!") but I know she loves her kids and she has definitely mellowed out with age. She raised two very independent-minded, responsible, kind, happy kids.
P.S. I also played piano when I was a kid and I was never forced. My mother agreed to pay for lessons when I asked for them."
END CITE.
RESPONSIBLE & STABLE
It's good to see the other side. Especially because it normally doesn't claim centre-stage - happy people are often not noticed, whereas misery and frustration are immensely attractive.
Or at least entertaining and eye-catching.
[We like dramas with weeping, wailing, and epic teeth-gnashing, or comedies in which no one gets along with each other, even drives the other characters up the wall. That's why 'The Odd Couple' was such fun, and that's why we watch Woody Allen's later movies, despite knowing that at the end we'll feel cheated by his over-use of art-galleries and bookstores as backdrops, despite knowing that he simply projected his own shallow neuroticism on his actors, despite the hollowness of his message, and the ostentatious narcissism in his work.]
Becoming good and decent is a monumental accomplishment.
People who can say that about themselves or their children have achieved victory.
"They are the cutest old Chinese couple you'll ever meet"
I've seen folks like that. Their basic fibre was so compatible that despite each one of them being a fully flavoured ingredient by themself, they melded over time to a remarkable unity.
All facing facets ended up matched.
I suspect that both of Ninjarina's parents were obstinate, and respected precisely that quality in each other.
Which is probably what, without either of them even being particularly conscious of it, they encouraged in their children.
It is an admirable achievement
Thank you for writing, Ninjarina. It brightened my morning.
------ATBOTH
About the title of this post? Some of you will recognize a malformation of "eishes chayil, mi yimtsa, verachok mi-pninim michra" from the brachus ha mishpoche, ultimately from Mishlei ('Proverbs'), verse 31:10 'A woman of valour who can find? for her price is far above rubies'.
Which seems quite the apposite reference.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It isn't always about having my own soapbox and screaming mad nonsense into the void.
Today a reader added her comment underneath something I posted a while back, showing a completely different point of view; one which I myself have not particularly stressed - it is somewhat outside of my own perspective, as you will understand - but which needs to be given a place in the spotlight.
[Underneath this post: http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2010/10/cantonese-daughters-and-their-moms.html In which I explain certain things about Cantonese women that have also been detailed by many other writers - an entire passel of Chinese-American female authors in particular.]
NINJARINA WROTE:
"I'm a Cantonese-American raised by Mainlanders and thankfully, my parents were and are loving people. My mother is one of those crazy bitches but unfortunately for her, I inherited her obstinance. No one could ever convince her she couldn't do something and it's more or less the same for me.
I consider myself extremely lucky b/c my mother found a man that is willing to put up with her shit and she held onto him for dear life. My father found a woman who would be fiercely protective of her family and extremely driven to succeed despite her odds. Together, they are the cutest old Chinese couple you'll ever meet. Many times, I wonder if in the case of immigrant wives, that they spend so much time and effort trying to live out the lives their circumstances could not afford them b/c they are so unfulfilled in both their working and personal lives.
Out of all of my aunts and uncles (blood related and otherwise), I can say with certainty that my parents are the most well-adjusted and consequently, my brother and I, while not particularly financially or even academically successful, are as my mother said, "good, decent people." It is the highest compliment she could have ever given us and she has told us this repeatedly. They helped put us through college and never demanded that we study something we didn't want (although we were not so subtly pushed toward it), just that we could find work and lead stable lives after we graduated. And isn't that the whole point of going to college anyway? They loved us SO much, they didn't hold it against us that we BOTH got our degrees in political science and we both decided to abort the path to law school. I'm getting ready to go into a physician's assistant program (on my own accord) and my brother is on his way to getting a MSW (Masters in Social Work).
I hope that my story cheers you up. My mother may have done some of those terrible things that Cantonese mothers do and I will NEVER agree that those methods are anything less than abuse (this really gets my mother's goat, not being able to tell me "I told you so!") but I know she loves her kids and she has definitely mellowed out with age. She raised two very independent-minded, responsible, kind, happy kids.
P.S. I also played piano when I was a kid and I was never forced. My mother agreed to pay for lessons when I asked for them."
END CITE.
RESPONSIBLE & STABLE
It's good to see the other side. Especially because it normally doesn't claim centre-stage - happy people are often not noticed, whereas misery and frustration are immensely attractive.
Or at least entertaining and eye-catching.
[We like dramas with weeping, wailing, and epic teeth-gnashing, or comedies in which no one gets along with each other, even drives the other characters up the wall. That's why 'The Odd Couple' was such fun, and that's why we watch Woody Allen's later movies, despite knowing that at the end we'll feel cheated by his over-use of art-galleries and bookstores as backdrops, despite knowing that he simply projected his own shallow neuroticism on his actors, despite the hollowness of his message, and the ostentatious narcissism in his work.]
Becoming good and decent is a monumental accomplishment.
People who can say that about themselves or their children have achieved victory.
"They are the cutest old Chinese couple you'll ever meet"
I've seen folks like that. Their basic fibre was so compatible that despite each one of them being a fully flavoured ingredient by themself, they melded over time to a remarkable unity.
All facing facets ended up matched.
I suspect that both of Ninjarina's parents were obstinate, and respected precisely that quality in each other.
Which is probably what, without either of them even being particularly conscious of it, they encouraged in their children.
It is an admirable achievement
Thank you for writing, Ninjarina. It brightened my morning.
------ATBOTH
About the title of this post? Some of you will recognize a malformation of "eishes chayil, mi yimtsa, verachok mi-pninim michra" from the brachus ha mishpoche, ultimately from Mishlei ('Proverbs'), verse 31:10 'A woman of valour who can find? for her price is far above rubies'.
Which seems quite the apposite reference.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, January 16, 2011
INSCRUTABLE ORIENTAL - DON'T BUG ME, I'M DISTURBED ENOUGH ALREADY!
It is very early in the morning. When I caught the bus there was a line outside of Bob's Doughnuts - all happy people. Pleasantly tiddly. The present fog presents yellow circles of haze around the street lights. Beautiful, yet immaterial.
Golden haloes in the mist.
Tonight I have listened to karaoke, and heard the very gates of hell. San Francisco, after closing time. Back to the office.
But no matter.
I wish to present a few youtube moments.
The first one is a classic.
Bus Uncle - Ba Si Ah Sook:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsYRQkmVifg
In this clip, a Cantonese gentleman shows both his most eloquent side, and represents the Hong Kong salt of the earth at its expressive best - vituperative, foul mouthed, wishing one primary action upon your maternal relative.
Oh, also completely off his rocker. Beauty.
Seeing as 'bus uncle' mentions reproductive acts several times, he deserves to be embedded:
BUS UNCLE
There then. Wasn't his insistence upon congressional action, in all of its parameters, totally charming?
The second video is a woman who wants sharkfin soup. Lordy, that desire fills her world. Whatever else may happen, she is intent upon that specific goal.
Please enjoy her persuasiveness here:
SHARK FIN SOUP
Having seen the video, we both feel for her, don't we? Surely sharkfin soup is the best thing in the known universe? Anything more soul-satisfying there cannot be!
This woman would agree:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue1SAgWHygM&feature=related
As a third item, I would like to present the woman who missed her flight.
NO BOARDING FOR YOU!
Indeed, how could it come to this? Maybe you shouldn't have stopped for snackies? Damned shame in any case - they should have held the flight.
You cannot be blamed for being late.
And this wonderful clip shows the Cantonese interpersonal dynamic better than anything else.
MUNI BUS SMACKDOWN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rm4SazjKsQ&feature=related
It's the only clip that needs no translation.
屌!!!
All of these embedded videos illustrate Cantonese people in action.
Really, whoever came up with the term "inscrutable Oriental" sure wasn't talking about this bunch. No one who operates at full volume deserves the sobriquet 'inscrutable'.
More scrutable than these people you cannot get.
How can you not love them?
They're operatic.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Golden haloes in the mist.
Tonight I have listened to karaoke, and heard the very gates of hell. San Francisco, after closing time. Back to the office.
But no matter.
I wish to present a few youtube moments.
The first one is a classic.
Bus Uncle - Ba Si Ah Sook:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsYRQkmVifg
In this clip, a Cantonese gentleman shows both his most eloquent side, and represents the Hong Kong salt of the earth at its expressive best - vituperative, foul mouthed, wishing one primary action upon your maternal relative.
Oh, also completely off his rocker. Beauty.
Seeing as 'bus uncle' mentions reproductive acts several times, he deserves to be embedded:
BUS UNCLE
There then. Wasn't his insistence upon congressional action, in all of its parameters, totally charming?
The second video is a woman who wants sharkfin soup. Lordy, that desire fills her world. Whatever else may happen, she is intent upon that specific goal.
Please enjoy her persuasiveness here:
SHARK FIN SOUP
Having seen the video, we both feel for her, don't we? Surely sharkfin soup is the best thing in the known universe? Anything more soul-satisfying there cannot be!
This woman would agree:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue1SAgWHygM&feature=related
As a third item, I would like to present the woman who missed her flight.
NO BOARDING FOR YOU!
Indeed, how could it come to this? Maybe you shouldn't have stopped for snackies? Damned shame in any case - they should have held the flight.
You cannot be blamed for being late.
And this wonderful clip shows the Cantonese interpersonal dynamic better than anything else.
MUNI BUS SMACKDOWN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rm4SazjKsQ&feature=related
It's the only clip that needs no translation.
屌!!!
All of these embedded videos illustrate Cantonese people in action.
Really, whoever came up with the term "inscrutable Oriental" sure wasn't talking about this bunch. No one who operates at full volume deserves the sobriquet 'inscrutable'.
More scrutable than these people you cannot get.
How can you not love them?
They're operatic.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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