Today I need to head over to Chinatown again, because the grocery store where I shop was closed yesterday. They're a source of coffee, coconut milk, Meltyblend chocolate, tea, noodles, hot sauce, sambal, curry paste, adzuki beans, dried shrimp, and various other necessities. Also, they have a good selection of dumplings in the freezer. A man must have his dumplings. They're affiliated in some way with the place across the street that has dried fish.
The women who run the place are very nice, and know what they're doing. I suspect that they are strong minded and stubborn, because their store is flourishing, well-stocked, bustling.
Very capable women.
I don't know if they speak English. I've never needed to use that there. Did have a slight problem the first time I needed to buy coconut milk, which I found out was yeh naai (椰奶), not yeh tsap (椰汁), which is coconut juice.
I suspect Trader Joe's and Whole Foods also have such things as coconut milk and noodles, or interesting freezer goods. The one time I had Chinese dumplings from Joe's it was because someone had given frozen dumplings to my apartment mate, and at least one of us had to try these things marketed with spirituality to white people.
I'm white, so it was me.
They weren't too bad.
I'm also a Dutchman (that is to say, I was raised in the Netherlands; we moved over there when I was two, and I am largely of Dutch American ancestry). So I'm a frightful cynic, a cheapskate, opportunistic, and I have an accent.
Consequently I do not like paying ten times too much for my staples, I do not particularly care that it was lovingly harvested by Zen nuns high in the Andes in touch with nature, my peanut butter tastes much better if it was not sourced from a precious non-GMO farm or invested with meaningfulness, and I really need to point out that in Chinatown no one has ever made me feel self-conscious or ill at ease because of my accent or my diction, whether in English or in Cantonese. Or Dutch. There used to be a store run by Chinese from Suriname there.
They spoke Dutch.
Plus the prices of the merchandise in most Chinese stores are not based on romantic fantasies or spiritual values. And there is a greater variety of things I want to buy. Some people might not find what they want there, because probably not a single shop stocks gluten-free guarana goji berry oatmeal non dairy icecream ........ lovingly churned by Zen nuns high in the Andes on a non-GMO farm invested with meaningfulness and in touch with nature.
My ability in Cantonese does have limits. I have no idea how to say "do you have Zen nun made gluten-free guarana goji berry oatmeal non dairy icecream from the Andes?"
At least not in a way that communicates.
你哋有冇安第斯山禪宗尼姑做嘅無麵筋瓜拿納同枸杞子雪糕嗎？
['nei dei yau mou on-daai-si saan sin-jung nei-gu jor-ge mou-min-gan gwaa-naa-naap tung gau-gei-ji suet gou ma']
You have to ask yourself two things.
1) Even if your pronunciation of "
nei dei yau mou on-daai-si saan sin-jung nei-gu jor-ge mou-min-gan gwaa-naa-naap tung gau-gei-ji suet-gou ma" was, hypothetically, one hundred percent correct, would the listener have enough context and familiarity with San Francisco yuppiedom and its cultural praeconceptiva to understand any part of that? Or will he throw you out of the store because you're a pretentious dickwad?
2) How badly do you want Zen nun made gluten-free guarana goji berry oatmeal non dairy ice cream from the Andes? Do you actually care that it's lovingly made and invested with meaning? Do you, in fact, even want it at all?
Are you a pretentious dickwad?
Actually, I think I'd like some 黑米粥 ('
hak maai juk') instead. I can find the fixings there. I like a version with pears or apples (苹果黑米粥). Rinse roughly equal parts black and white 米 before simmering with eight times the volume water to the nearly falling apart stage, then add fresh or canned apples or pears and their syrup or sugar to taste, simmer a while longer. It can also be made with coconut milk, or red bean puree. And canned peaches are not a bad idea either.
In Brabant we made something quite similar with pearl barley and dried fruits.
Remarkably, Andean zen nuns who karmically invest their lovingly turned out spiritually uplifting non-GMO foodstuffs with meaning have no accents at all. They sound just like Americans!
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