THE ROUTE ACROSS THE HILLS

It irritates me to see very large white people in Chinatown. This is probably because I am bigoted against humongous Midwestern heffalumps. Every one I know eats like rational beings -- one minor exception: a woman in the East Bay who sometimes goes through pints of icecream late at night, to assuage her despair at the bone-headedness of people in that part of the world -- so seeing folks with eating habits that take sweet 'n sour pork out the hands of starving babies in Africa is painful.

All over equatorial Africa there are little children wailing "oh, I wish I could eat some sweet 'n sour pork, but the Midwestern women took it all!" And then they weep themselves to sleep. It's very sad.

On the other hand, I can understand why their SF resident college grad kids became vegan.
Massive guilt over their mom and aunties horrible eating habits.
And the sweet 'n sour pork hunger in Africa.
Those poor porkless orphans!


You know, sweet 'n sour bean mulch is NOT in any way Chinese.
Probably entirely a white folks invention.
But Spam™ and instanoodles?
Very Hong Kong!

Lunch was at a chachanteng in Chinatown, and it wasn't sweet 'n sour pork. I don't know if that place even does sweet 'n sour. Anything. They probably do, because if a Midwesterner wanders in they want to feed the poor elephant. "One big bucker of sweet 'n sour and one bucket of fried rice coming up! And a diet coke."

The kitchen is a bloody disaster zone afterwards, but Miss Iowa is happy.
Her guts thunder their approval.



The illustration above is the New Territories in Hong Kong.
No rattlesnakes or poison ivy anywhere.
Very few Midwesterners.
Ever.



As a white person, I need to clarify that neither I nor anyone I am related to have ever eaten a poor starving orphan in Africa out of the sweet 'n sour pork to which they were so looking forward and which they richly deserved. The last time any of us were in the Midwest was over a century ago. Before sweet 'n sour pork was a concept.



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