BASICALLY CHICKEN AND RICE

More power to that young lady with the big behinds. This is NOT big behind shaming, they seem to fit her, and they are on top of sturdy legs, and even though she is feminine and shorter than myself I wouldn't want to encounter her angry in a dark alley late at night.
She looks very Irish and would probably wipe the floor with me. Her more Americanized kinsperson who lives up the block has a less "kill all the viking invaders" pysique.
But often looks just as fierce or determined.

She marched past while I was outside smoking. My earlier pipeful had had me encountering Russell, who seems to be fully recovered mostly from the pneumonia he had been stricken with four months ago, and wished to complain at length about every single restaurant in his neighborhood including a new one, as well as the coffee at one place where they don't do American slop but instead make a halfway decent cup.

Personally, I like their HK milk tea. Strong and bitter. And every place he complained about is perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned -- having eaten at many of them since May, and all of them several times over the last few years -- so it's extremely likely that his constant bellyaching is a mental gymnastic which stimulates serotonin production.
Bluntly put, he's happiest when he's miserable.

I had filled the pipe while waiting for my food to come. At a place which he is not at all impressed by. He says it's all tasteless. So so.

MIXED VEGETABLES AND CHICKEN WITH RICE

For a place wich isn't that good (apparently), it was jampacked when I went in. All of C'town needed sustenance at that hour. Including a young mandarin speaking couple at the next table who had ordered so much that they left half their food untouched, an elderly couple the female component of which seemed incredibly out of sorts which was the male component's fault because he wasn't doing anything about it, two old ladies gorging themselves on claypot dishes which sizzled and smelled wonderful, and several old men eating alone and being very happy about that.

Normally I wouldn't have ordered 什菜雞球飯 'jap choi gai kau faan'). It seems unimginative. So very ... chopsuey-ish. which is exactly what 什菜 means. Chopsuey over rice with a juice rich in garlic fragments. Probably also cornstarch and rice wine, but no soy sauce.
A white person might not have been able to identify it.

It was very, very good. Russell would have enjoyed bitching about it.

What I also enjoyed was the Chinese serial on the telly. In which food played an enormous part, along with a young woman with a horrible temper, her aged papa whom she respected very much, and two emotional young men whose connection to anybody was unclear but if the subtitles had been more legible from my seating distance that would have been less opaque and much more understandable.
A banquet. A gift of fruits. Live fish for the pot. Noodle dishes. A late afternoon meal, some lovely looking homemade congee elsewhere, and a plate of glazed looking sauced stalky vegetables which I believe were kangkong (空心菜 'hung sam choi', 通菜 'tung choi', 蕹菜 'ung choi'; ipomoea aquatica, water spinach).

All in a modern-day setting. A city with tall buildings and broad avenues. China today looks a lot different than how I do not remember it, never having been there.

The key ingredients in any good Chinese teevee series are family drama, lots of crying, and tonnes of food. Especially the food must be well-cinematographed.



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