Years before I started watching Cantonese movies, I saw Mandarin-language films. There was something magical about the actors and actresses then, other-worldly.
Many of the movies showed a time and place long gone, entirely unrecoverable.
Yet seeing them on screen brought them briefly back to life.
Among the many talented performers, several names stand out.
One of them being Dong Pei-pei (董佩佩).
Think of a voice like melting honey.
好花不常開
Born in 1928 on the mainland, fled to Hong Kong in 1949. She became famous for songs such as 玫瑰良緣 ('the perfect match for the rose') and 第二春 ('second-time spring'). By the time of her death in 1976 or 1978 her star had faded, and her cause of death is not known.
She also sang in Suzhou dialect.
Not available on youtube.
Here's a song I had not heard before.
兩個世界－董佩佩，楊光
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GipAuJBbNIk.]
The next song is definitely typical of a different time and place; a simple romantic duet, with visuals which make clear that neither person is familiar with twerking or modern Hollywood style.
上山坡－董佩佩，楊光
[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMw97oWrMmU.]
All of this came back because yesterday evening, while riding the bus home from Chinatown with fresh home-made wontons and a bag of yauchoi, I had the misfortune of sitting behind some young office-wallah with headphones. Remarkably cheap headphones. Many of the other passengers got to "enjoy" his musical taste, which, primarily, consisted of rap in which the 'F' word prominently featured.
F this, F that, effing F and F to the F.
Uncouth, and illiterate.
I'm sure that the popular songs of the forties and fifties also expressed the keenly felt frustrations of their audience. But those may have been much more civil frustrations.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Showing posts with label Shanghai 上海. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shanghai 上海. Show all posts
Friday, January 30, 2015
Friday, June 27, 2014
春天裡來天真的好姑娘 —— IN SPRING COMES A FAIR MAIDEN
One of the very first Chinese movies I ever saw was the slanted yet cheerful film Intersection (十字街頭 'shi zi jie tou'), at the end of which four companions share the news that a fifth person, also a friend, has in despair committed suicide. They decide that that was the weak way out, and arm in arm with new resolve they stride forth from the Shanghai docks into the broad tumultuous city to go on living.
It is, of course, a love story. Zhao (played by Zhao Dan 趙丹) falls in love with Yang. Wet laundry is involved, along with factory work and trams.
All five people are, at times, unemployed.
They are poor, but they are chipper.
Sadness, heartache, pathos; good cheer, romance, and gumption!
Plus of course the fortuitous circumstance that the love interest, played by Bai Yang (白楊), rents the room next to where Zhao and Xu live.
Which, at first, neither realize.
Here's the scene where Zhao is deliriously happy about having met a charming young lady. He sings gaily as he spruces up.
La la la la la! Perhaps even hey tiddly hi ho!
Or, in Chinese, lang li ge lang.
朗里格朗。
春天裡 -- 趙丹歌詞
SPRINGTIME, BY ZHAO DAN
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14zfvPyF2Mk
春天裡 - 趙丹歌詞
春天裡來百花香，郎里格朗里格朗里格朗，
和暖的太陽在天空照，照到了我的破衣裳，
朗里格朗格朗里格朗， 穿過了大街走小巷，
為了吃來為了穿， 晝夜都要忙。
朗里格朗， 朗里格朗， 沒有錢也得吃碗飯，
也得住間房， 哪怕老闆娘作那怪模樣，
里格朗里格朗， 朗里格朗， 朗里格朗。
朗里格朗， 朗里格朗， 貧窮不是從天降，
生鐵久煉也成鋼， 也成鋼；
只要努力向前進， 哪怕高山把路擋。
朗里格朗格朗里格朗， 遇見了一位好姑娘，
親愛的好姑娘, 天真的好姑娘！
不用悲， 不用傷， 人生好比戰場， 身體健， 氣力壯，
努力來乾一場；
身體健氣力壯大家努力干一場。
秋季裡來菊花黃， 朗里格朗里格朗里格朗，
陣陣的微風在迎面吹，吹動了我的破衣裳，
朗里格朗格朗里格朗，穿過了大街走小巷，
為了吃來為了穿， 晝夜都要忙。
朗里格朗， 朗里格朗，
沒工作也得吃碗飯，
也得住間房， 哪怕老闆娘作那怪模樣，
朗里格朗里格朗里格朗里格朗里格朗。
里格朗里格朗，
成敗不是從天降，生鐵久煉也成鋼， 也成鋼，
只要努力向前進哪怕高山把路擋。
朗里格朗里格朗里格朗，
遇見了一位好姑娘，
親愛的好姑娘，天真的好姑娘！
不用悲， 不用傷，
前途自有風和浪，穩把舵齊鼓槳哪怕是大海洋，
向前進， 莫徬徨， 黑暗盡處有曙光。
Chūntiān lǐ - Zhào Dān gēcí
Chūntiān lǐ lái bǎihuā xiāng, láng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Hé nuǎn de tàiyáng zài tiānkōng zhào, zhào dàole wǒ de pò yīshang,
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, chuānguòle dàjiē zǒu xiǎo xiàng,
Wèile chī lái wèile chuān, zhòuyè dōu yào máng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, méiyǒu qián yě dé chī wǎn fàn,
Yě dé zhù jiān fáng, nǎpà lǎobǎnniáng zuò nà guài múyàng,
Lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, pínqióng bùshì cóng tiān jiàng,
Shēng tiě jiǔ liàn yě chéng gāng, yě chéng gāng,
Zhǐyào nǔlì xiàng qiánjìn, nǎpà gāoshān bǎ lù dǎng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, yùjiànle yī wèi hǎo gūniáng,
Qīn'ài de hǎo gūniáng, tiānzhēn de hǎo gūniáng!
Bùyòng bēi, bùyòng shāng, rénshēng hǎobǐ zhànchǎng, shēntǐ jiàn, qìlì zhuàng,
Nǔlì lái gān yīchǎng;
Shēntǐ jiàn, qìlì zhuàng, dàjiā nǔlì gàn yīchǎng.
Qiūjì lǐ lái júhuā huáng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Zhèn zhèn de wéifēng zài yíngmiàn chuī, chuī dòngle wǒ de pò yīshang,
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, chuānguòle dàjiē zǒu xiǎo xiàng,
Wèile chī lái wèile chuān, zhòuyè dōu yào máng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎnglǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Méi gōngzuò yě dé chī wǎn fàn,
Yě dé zhù jiān fáng, nǎpà lǎobǎnniáng zuò nà guài múyàng,
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng.
Lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Chéngbài bùshì cóng tiān, jiàngshēng tiě jiǔ liàn, yě chéng gāng,
Zhǐyào nǔlì xiàng qiánjìn nǎpà gāoshān bǎ lù dǎng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Yùjiànle yī wèi hǎo gūniáng,
Qīn'ài de hǎo gūniáng, tiānzhēn de hǎo gū niáng,
Bùyòng bēi, bùyòng shāng,
Qiántú zì yǒu fēng hé làng, wěn bǎduò qí gǔ jiǎng nǎpà shì dà hǎiyáng,
Xiàng qiánjìn, mò páng huáng, hēi'àn jǐn chù yǒu shǔguāng.
Paraphrasis:
"In Springtime multitudes of flowers bloom, the sun lights the sky and warms my worn out clothing; I walk through the streets and alleyways, and I have to stay busy day and night to feed and clothe myself. Barely any money for a bowl of rice! I'm still housed, but the landlady gives me queer looks."
"Poverty is not necessarily fated, as long as you strive despite all obstacles; AND I have met a wonderful girl, a lovable and precious girl! What use is sadness, what use is heartache; life's travails require strength and determination, if one remains healthy one may build a family."
"In Autumn the chrysanthemums blossom, the wind rips at my face and tattered clothing; I walk through the streets and alleyways, and I have to keep busy day and night to feed and clothe myself .......
........ success has it's own wind and waves, together storms are drummed up; go forward without fear, the darkness yields to brilliant dawn."
It is a cheerfully optimistic song, perhaps even insanely so. At the time, China was reeling from the Japanese invasion, and the bandy-legged dwarf terrorists were riding high on the corpses of their victims; the poverty and economic hardship was at a peak in Shanghai, where the common people could not distinguish between gangsters and bankers, so intertwined had those two endeavors become, and politicians and activists were heading ever faster towards a bloody cataclysm.
Yet the protagonist played by Zhao Dan sees reason for hope. He can eat, despite having no job, and he has found the girl of his dreams.
He is strong, and determined that all will be well.
It bloody well has to be!
Never give up.
When I first saw this movie circumstances in San Francisco were by no means rosy. Ronald Reagan was in Washington, and the Republicans were intent on rolling back the tide of human progress. Employment skills such mechanical draughting and print-technology were being destroyed by technical advances, particularly CAD ('computer-aided design').
I'm sure you recall that it wasn't the best of times.
The movie spoke to me.
You'll note that that handsome devil Zhao Dan, when hanging his sopping laundry to dry, inadvertently places it so that by the time the young lady next door wakes up her pillow will be drenched. She and her friend get even by pushing the pole back over to his side, and then hammer his picture nails back too. A mini war is thus started, and one of the funny moments happens when in discussing their neighbor problems with each other they slowly realize that they're talking about the other person.
The entire movie can be seen here:
十字街頭
It is without subtitles.
But the Mandarin is very clear.
The singing scene takes place at the twenty fifth minute in. The dripping wakes up Yang in the next room, who reacts with indignation at the twenty eighth minute, just after Zhao has stepped out.
In the months after the release of the movie, things went from bad to very much worse. The Japanese war machine spun into high gear, and Shanghai bore the brunt of the madness. Tens, hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered, and many artists, intellectuals, and university graduates undertook the arduous journey to the safe areas in Szechuan and Shensi, far behind the lines.
Twelve years later, the music finally played again in Shanghai, but not with the spirit it once had had.
The next several years were somewhat more silent.
Zhao Dan, original name 趙鳳翱 ('Zhao Feng-ao') was born in 1915. His career ended during the Cultural Revolution.
He passed away in 1980.
Miss Bai Yang (楊成芳 'Yang Chengfan'), who was a charming teenager when this movie was made (born April 22, 1920), lived until 1996. She continued making movies in Shanghai till 1961. Following a regrettable hiatus of over twenty years, she first performed again in 1989.
Intersection was his fourth film, her second.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It is, of course, a love story. Zhao (played by Zhao Dan 趙丹) falls in love with Yang. Wet laundry is involved, along with factory work and trams.
All five people are, at times, unemployed.
They are poor, but they are chipper.
Sadness, heartache, pathos; good cheer, romance, and gumption!
Plus of course the fortuitous circumstance that the love interest, played by Bai Yang (白楊), rents the room next to where Zhao and Xu live.
Which, at first, neither realize.
Here's the scene where Zhao is deliriously happy about having met a charming young lady. He sings gaily as he spruces up.
La la la la la! Perhaps even hey tiddly hi ho!
Or, in Chinese, lang li ge lang.
朗里格朗。
春天裡 -- 趙丹歌詞
SPRINGTIME, BY ZHAO DAN
[Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14zfvPyF2Mk
春天裡 - 趙丹歌詞
春天裡來百花香，郎里格朗里格朗里格朗，
和暖的太陽在天空照，照到了我的破衣裳，
朗里格朗格朗里格朗， 穿過了大街走小巷，
為了吃來為了穿， 晝夜都要忙。
朗里格朗， 朗里格朗， 沒有錢也得吃碗飯，
也得住間房， 哪怕老闆娘作那怪模樣，
里格朗里格朗， 朗里格朗， 朗里格朗。
朗里格朗， 朗里格朗， 貧窮不是從天降，
生鐵久煉也成鋼， 也成鋼；
只要努力向前進， 哪怕高山把路擋。
朗里格朗格朗里格朗， 遇見了一位好姑娘，
親愛的好姑娘, 天真的好姑娘！
不用悲， 不用傷， 人生好比戰場， 身體健， 氣力壯，
努力來乾一場；
身體健氣力壯大家努力干一場。
秋季裡來菊花黃， 朗里格朗里格朗里格朗，
陣陣的微風在迎面吹，吹動了我的破衣裳，
朗里格朗格朗里格朗，穿過了大街走小巷，
為了吃來為了穿， 晝夜都要忙。
朗里格朗， 朗里格朗，
沒工作也得吃碗飯，
也得住間房， 哪怕老闆娘作那怪模樣，
朗里格朗里格朗里格朗里格朗里格朗。
里格朗里格朗，
成敗不是從天降，生鐵久煉也成鋼， 也成鋼，
只要努力向前進哪怕高山把路擋。
朗里格朗里格朗里格朗，
遇見了一位好姑娘，
親愛的好姑娘，天真的好姑娘！
不用悲， 不用傷，
前途自有風和浪，穩把舵齊鼓槳哪怕是大海洋，
向前進， 莫徬徨， 黑暗盡處有曙光。
Chūntiān lǐ - Zhào Dān gēcí
Chūntiān lǐ lái bǎihuā xiāng, láng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Hé nuǎn de tàiyáng zài tiānkōng zhào, zhào dàole wǒ de pò yīshang,
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, chuānguòle dàjiē zǒu xiǎo xiàng,
Wèile chī lái wèile chuān, zhòuyè dōu yào máng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, méiyǒu qián yě dé chī wǎn fàn,
Yě dé zhù jiān fáng, nǎpà lǎobǎnniáng zuò nà guài múyàng,
Lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, pínqióng bùshì cóng tiān jiàng,
Shēng tiě jiǔ liàn yě chéng gāng, yě chéng gāng,
Zhǐyào nǔlì xiàng qiánjìn, nǎpà gāoshān bǎ lù dǎng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, yùjiànle yī wèi hǎo gūniáng,
Qīn'ài de hǎo gūniáng, tiānzhēn de hǎo gūniáng!
Bùyòng bēi, bùyòng shāng, rénshēng hǎobǐ zhànchǎng, shēntǐ jiàn, qìlì zhuàng,
Nǔlì lái gān yīchǎng;
Shēntǐ jiàn, qìlì zhuàng, dàjiā nǔlì gàn yīchǎng.
Qiūjì lǐ lái júhuā huáng, lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Zhèn zhèn de wéifēng zài yíngmiàn chuī, chuī dòngle wǒ de pò yīshang,
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng, chuānguòle dàjiē zǒu xiǎo xiàng,
Wèile chī lái wèile chuān, zhòuyè dōu yào máng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎnglǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Méi gōngzuò yě dé chī wǎn fàn,
Yě dé zhù jiān fáng, nǎpà lǎobǎnniáng zuò nà guài múyàng,
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng.
Lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Chéngbài bùshì cóng tiān, jiàngshēng tiě jiǔ liàn, yě chéng gāng,
Zhǐyào nǔlì xiàng qiánjìn nǎpà gāoshān bǎ lù dǎng.
Lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng lǐ gé lǎng,
Yùjiànle yī wèi hǎo gūniáng,
Qīn'ài de hǎo gūniáng, tiānzhēn de hǎo gū niáng,
Bùyòng bēi, bùyòng shāng,
Qiántú zì yǒu fēng hé làng, wěn bǎduò qí gǔ jiǎng nǎpà shì dà hǎiyáng,
Xiàng qiánjìn, mò páng huáng, hēi'àn jǐn chù yǒu shǔguāng.
Paraphrasis:
"In Springtime multitudes of flowers bloom, the sun lights the sky and warms my worn out clothing; I walk through the streets and alleyways, and I have to stay busy day and night to feed and clothe myself. Barely any money for a bowl of rice! I'm still housed, but the landlady gives me queer looks."
"Poverty is not necessarily fated, as long as you strive despite all obstacles; AND I have met a wonderful girl, a lovable and precious girl! What use is sadness, what use is heartache; life's travails require strength and determination, if one remains healthy one may build a family."
"In Autumn the chrysanthemums blossom, the wind rips at my face and tattered clothing; I walk through the streets and alleyways, and I have to keep busy day and night to feed and clothe myself .......
........ success has it's own wind and waves, together storms are drummed up; go forward without fear, the darkness yields to brilliant dawn."
It is a cheerfully optimistic song, perhaps even insanely so. At the time, China was reeling from the Japanese invasion, and the bandy-legged dwarf terrorists were riding high on the corpses of their victims; the poverty and economic hardship was at a peak in Shanghai, where the common people could not distinguish between gangsters and bankers, so intertwined had those two endeavors become, and politicians and activists were heading ever faster towards a bloody cataclysm.
Yet the protagonist played by Zhao Dan sees reason for hope. He can eat, despite having no job, and he has found the girl of his dreams.
He is strong, and determined that all will be well.
It bloody well has to be!
Never give up.
When I first saw this movie circumstances in San Francisco were by no means rosy. Ronald Reagan was in Washington, and the Republicans were intent on rolling back the tide of human progress. Employment skills such mechanical draughting and print-technology were being destroyed by technical advances, particularly CAD ('computer-aided design').
I'm sure you recall that it wasn't the best of times.
The movie spoke to me.
You'll note that that handsome devil Zhao Dan, when hanging his sopping laundry to dry, inadvertently places it so that by the time the young lady next door wakes up her pillow will be drenched. She and her friend get even by pushing the pole back over to his side, and then hammer his picture nails back too. A mini war is thus started, and one of the funny moments happens when in discussing their neighbor problems with each other they slowly realize that they're talking about the other person.
The entire movie can be seen here:
十字街頭
It is without subtitles.
But the Mandarin is very clear.
The singing scene takes place at the twenty fifth minute in. The dripping wakes up Yang in the next room, who reacts with indignation at the twenty eighth minute, just after Zhao has stepped out.
In the months after the release of the movie, things went from bad to very much worse. The Japanese war machine spun into high gear, and Shanghai bore the brunt of the madness. Tens, hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered, and many artists, intellectuals, and university graduates undertook the arduous journey to the safe areas in Szechuan and Shensi, far behind the lines.
Twelve years later, the music finally played again in Shanghai, but not with the spirit it once had had.
The next several years were somewhat more silent.
Zhao Dan, original name 趙鳳翱 ('Zhao Feng-ao') was born in 1915. His career ended during the Cultural Revolution.
He passed away in 1980.
Miss Bai Yang (楊成芳 'Yang Chengfan'), who was a charming teenager when this movie was made (born April 22, 1920), lived until 1996. She continued making movies in Shanghai till 1961. Following a regrettable hiatus of over twenty years, she first performed again in 1989.
Intersection was his fourth film, her second.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, April 19, 2014
IT'S NOT PORRIDGE, IT'S RICE SOUP: CHOI PO FAN 菜泡飯
You've probably read a lot of mentions on this blog of rice porridge (粥 juk, "jook"), and seen me wax ecstatic over that simple preparation. The problem is that cooking jook takes attention and time if it's done properly.
Low temperature and frequent stirring to prevent scorching while helping the rice grains break down are key. You're aiming for something akin to gloop, yet spoonably thin. Add some broth, and either dried oysters (蠔豉 'hou si') or sliced preserved egg (皮蛋 'pei daan'), plus lean pork or sliced fresh fish.
Even dried fish (柴魚 'chai yü'), pork floss (肉鬆 'yiuk sung'), and fried peanuts (炸花生 'jaa faa sang').
An upscale version, with baby oysters and minced pork, is also a great idea: 蠔仔肉碎粥 ('hou chai yiuk seui juk')。
Rice porridge is profound comfort food.
But it isn't po fan.
上海菜泡飯 SEUNG HOI CHOI POU FAAN
Preparing po fan (泡飯 'soaked rice') starts hours before it is eaten, and requires hardly any effort at all. Soak well-rinsed rice in fresh water for a few hours, or overnight in the refrigerator. Drain, put in a pot with six to eight times as much liquid -- ideally, half water half stock -- and bring to a boil. Simmer for ten minutes till the rice has fluffed up, turn off.
Chop up a little fatty pork or bacon, plus small green cabbage (青菜), some leafy greens, scallion, and ginger. In a hot wok parch these ingredients briefly, seethe with a generous splash of rice wine (or use cooking sherry), then dump the rice and its liquid over.
Serve in bowls, accompanied by pressed pickle (榨菜 'ja choi'), sweet-soy and vinegar steeped daikon (醬蘿蔔 'jeung lo baak'), spicy bamboo shoot (辣筍茸 'laat suen yong'), rinsed and chopped snow cabbage (雪菜 'suet choi'), and perhaps a few small pieces of roast chicken.
Anything salty, savoury, spicy.
Eat with a spoon.
The key is that the rice grains are still distinct and whole.
It can also be made with leftover rice.
This, in essence, is the Shanghainese national dish. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, or whenever you feel like it.
Choi pou faan is not, however, restaurant fare. Consequently I would probably not expect it at one of my favourite eateries, though I'm absolutely certain they could make a stellar version.
上海飯店
BUND SHANGHAI RESTAURANT
640 Jackson Street
San Francisco, CA 94133.
Telephone: 415-982-0618
You'll find many other things to eat there, including several dishes not available elsewhere. The ambiance is very nice, the service is extremely courteous and considerate, and food is absolutely superb.
It would be the perfect place to take a date sometime.
Save the pou faan for a midnight snack.
Or breakfast together.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Low temperature and frequent stirring to prevent scorching while helping the rice grains break down are key. You're aiming for something akin to gloop, yet spoonably thin. Add some broth, and either dried oysters (蠔豉 'hou si') or sliced preserved egg (皮蛋 'pei daan'), plus lean pork or sliced fresh fish.
Even dried fish (柴魚 'chai yü'), pork floss (肉鬆 'yiuk sung'), and fried peanuts (炸花生 'jaa faa sang').
An upscale version, with baby oysters and minced pork, is also a great idea: 蠔仔肉碎粥 ('hou chai yiuk seui juk')。
Rice porridge is profound comfort food.
But it isn't po fan.
上海菜泡飯 SEUNG HOI CHOI POU FAAN
Preparing po fan (泡飯 'soaked rice') starts hours before it is eaten, and requires hardly any effort at all. Soak well-rinsed rice in fresh water for a few hours, or overnight in the refrigerator. Drain, put in a pot with six to eight times as much liquid -- ideally, half water half stock -- and bring to a boil. Simmer for ten minutes till the rice has fluffed up, turn off.
Chop up a little fatty pork or bacon, plus small green cabbage (青菜), some leafy greens, scallion, and ginger. In a hot wok parch these ingredients briefly, seethe with a generous splash of rice wine (or use cooking sherry), then dump the rice and its liquid over.
Serve in bowls, accompanied by pressed pickle (榨菜 'ja choi'), sweet-soy and vinegar steeped daikon (醬蘿蔔 'jeung lo baak'), spicy bamboo shoot (辣筍茸 'laat suen yong'), rinsed and chopped snow cabbage (雪菜 'suet choi'), and perhaps a few small pieces of roast chicken.
Anything salty, savoury, spicy.
Eat with a spoon.
The key is that the rice grains are still distinct and whole.
It can also be made with leftover rice.
This, in essence, is the Shanghainese national dish. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, or whenever you feel like it.
Choi pou faan is not, however, restaurant fare. Consequently I would probably not expect it at one of my favourite eateries, though I'm absolutely certain they could make a stellar version.
上海飯店
BUND SHANGHAI RESTAURANT
640 Jackson Street
San Francisco, CA 94133.
Telephone: 415-982-0618
You'll find many other things to eat there, including several dishes not available elsewhere. The ambiance is very nice, the service is extremely courteous and considerate, and food is absolutely superb.
It would be the perfect place to take a date sometime.
Save the pou faan for a midnight snack.
Or breakfast together.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, March 30, 2014
DINNER AT THE BUND
The people within easy view were, mostly, not Chinese. Which was not at all surprising seeing as the restaurant was in the middle of Chinatown; one does not expect a flock of Cantonese folks settling down for family dinner in a Shanghainese place. Which made it absolutely perfect for the three or four interracial couples present -- it gave them a greater likelihood of privacy and confidentiality -- and the delicious novelty of SHANGHAINESE (!) food had doubtlessly pulled in several of the other customers who were there.
Novelty will only go so far; the cooking is actually pretty darn good.
Enough variety that even Midwesterners might be happy.
Some Shanghainese dishes, and soup dumplings.
Soup dumplings are extremely Shanghai.
Plus other excellent things.
I got what I always get there: a plate of steamed dumplings. Not the soup dumplings (小籠包), but a very lovely version of the standard jiaoze which Cantonese people never make.
韭菜豬肉水餃
Nope, hardly a clue what those are called in the Wu dialects; we call them gau choi chü yiuk soei gaau. Chives and pork meat water dumplings. They're absolutely great fresh and hot, with shredded ginger black vinegar, and a sploodge of hot sauce. The typical Shanghainese will not add that latter condiment, but I'm a barbarian so I can get away with it.
And, given that I ordered in Cantonese, might as well leave them with a weird impression of other Chinese....... which, as a white guy, I'm obviously not. Life should be surreal; I do my bit to make it so.
A man has got to have his dumplings; sometimes one wants won ton (雲吞), sometimes it has to be Northern style soei gaau (水餃).
Dumplings are perfect for a single diner.
Everything else requires multiple people at the same table, or truly piggish appetites. Chinese restaurant kitchens are not quite capable of keeping the solitary beast in mind, so almost everything on the menu will presume that a large bunch of happy people will share everything ordered.
And Chinese people are largely social eaters.
Mature white bachelors -- especially bachelors who did not used to be bachelors -- are not fit company. We eat alone. On a bad day we will bury our faces deep in a plate of bacon and cheese lobster, and crack the shell with our teeth, sucking down the greasy richness with growling sounds.
Or we'll snap at a juicy steak like a dog chivying a squirrel, till at last we've wrestled it from the plate on which it was hiding, like the wuss that it was,
to a corner of the floor, where we rip it to shreds with our fangs.
There is naught refined, or even sentient, about our eating.
We scratch at fleas and chase away other predators.
And we blink and bark and slobber.
Doberman diner.
In the years of our bitter solitude we've gotten used to frightening children and little old ladies. Happy families cover their eyes and veer tremblingly away. Civilians and other delicate spirits flee in horror.
But once in a while we put on clothing, and venture to a place where some damned fine dumplings may be had. With restrained good manners, and unconscious dexterity, we dip the juicy morsel into the shredded ginger black vinegar, then into the hot sauce. Delicately, without spilling a single drop, we move it to our mouth, and take a bite.
Mmmm, so good.
A perfect dumpling reminds us that we used to be civilized.
It also fills the gaping holes in the soul.
And, of course, it hits the spot.
It rained yesterday morning. I got drenched. All day long I thought about dumplings. Once I got back to the city, I went straight to Jackson Street. Ten steamed dumplings and a full pot of jasmine tea for less than nine dollars. Courteous staff, considerate service; they're used to exiles wandering in by themselves for a taste of something familiar.
I left a generous tip, and lit up my pipe after I left.
The evening felt new, even after a full day.
First head east, then turn south.
Towards company.
Smoke
The pipe tobacco was Old Gowrie, which is a pleasant partially broken brown Virginia flake by Rattrays of Perth. Nothing extraordinary, just a sturdy, decent, and reliable smoke. It is surprising how fast one can go through a tin once opened. Sweet, suggestive, and slightly spicy.
It speaks of golden ages, quietness, and civilized living.
And of jasmine tea and steamed dumplings.
But that could just be me.
I recommend it.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Novelty will only go so far; the cooking is actually pretty darn good.
Enough variety that even Midwesterners might be happy.
Some Shanghainese dishes, and soup dumplings.
Soup dumplings are extremely Shanghai.
Plus other excellent things.
I got what I always get there: a plate of steamed dumplings. Not the soup dumplings (小籠包), but a very lovely version of the standard jiaoze which Cantonese people never make.
韭菜豬肉水餃
Nope, hardly a clue what those are called in the Wu dialects; we call them gau choi chü yiuk soei gaau. Chives and pork meat water dumplings. They're absolutely great fresh and hot, with shredded ginger black vinegar, and a sploodge of hot sauce. The typical Shanghainese will not add that latter condiment, but I'm a barbarian so I can get away with it.
And, given that I ordered in Cantonese, might as well leave them with a weird impression of other Chinese....... which, as a white guy, I'm obviously not. Life should be surreal; I do my bit to make it so.
A man has got to have his dumplings; sometimes one wants won ton (雲吞), sometimes it has to be Northern style soei gaau (水餃).
Dumplings are perfect for a single diner.
Everything else requires multiple people at the same table, or truly piggish appetites. Chinese restaurant kitchens are not quite capable of keeping the solitary beast in mind, so almost everything on the menu will presume that a large bunch of happy people will share everything ordered.
And Chinese people are largely social eaters.
Mature white bachelors -- especially bachelors who did not used to be bachelors -- are not fit company. We eat alone. On a bad day we will bury our faces deep in a plate of bacon and cheese lobster, and crack the shell with our teeth, sucking down the greasy richness with growling sounds.
Or we'll snap at a juicy steak like a dog chivying a squirrel, till at last we've wrestled it from the plate on which it was hiding, like the wuss that it was,
to a corner of the floor, where we rip it to shreds with our fangs.
There is naught refined, or even sentient, about our eating.
We scratch at fleas and chase away other predators.
And we blink and bark and slobber.
Doberman diner.
In the years of our bitter solitude we've gotten used to frightening children and little old ladies. Happy families cover their eyes and veer tremblingly away. Civilians and other delicate spirits flee in horror.
But once in a while we put on clothing, and venture to a place where some damned fine dumplings may be had. With restrained good manners, and unconscious dexterity, we dip the juicy morsel into the shredded ginger black vinegar, then into the hot sauce. Delicately, without spilling a single drop, we move it to our mouth, and take a bite.
Mmmm, so good.
A perfect dumpling reminds us that we used to be civilized.
It also fills the gaping holes in the soul.
And, of course, it hits the spot.
It rained yesterday morning. I got drenched. All day long I thought about dumplings. Once I got back to the city, I went straight to Jackson Street. Ten steamed dumplings and a full pot of jasmine tea for less than nine dollars. Courteous staff, considerate service; they're used to exiles wandering in by themselves for a taste of something familiar.
I left a generous tip, and lit up my pipe after I left.
The evening felt new, even after a full day.
First head east, then turn south.
Towards company.
Smoke
The pipe tobacco was Old Gowrie, which is a pleasant partially broken brown Virginia flake by Rattrays of Perth. Nothing extraordinary, just a sturdy, decent, and reliable smoke. It is surprising how fast one can go through a tin once opened. Sweet, suggestive, and slightly spicy.
It speaks of golden ages, quietness, and civilized living.
And of jasmine tea and steamed dumplings.
But that could just be me.
I recommend it.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, April 13, 2013
SHANGHAI BUND: A PLACE, A TELEVISION SERIES, AND A WAY OF LIFE
Late the other night I dined on Japanese crispy objects made by a company in Thailand (Taokaenoi Food & Marketing Co., Ltd.) and distributed in the United States by a Chinese enterprise whose name cannot be found anywhere on the label.
It is delicious with good nutrients from the sea, best served as snack with your favourite drink: tempura seaweed, spicy flavour. Yumminess in a re-sealable bag, invented by a computer game nerd.
Manufacturing facilities are in Nonthaburi and Pathumthani.
Naturally I washed it down with Jameson's Irish Whiskey. Which is a fine product of the Pernod Ricard Company in France, though founded by a Scotsman in Dublin. After which I smoked an English pipe tobacco produced by a factory in Germany.
Life may not be multicultural, but my habits are.
Though you might say "messed up".
I will blame exposure during my mis-spent youth for some of that.
In the mid-eighties I moved to North Beach, which is next to Chinatown.One of the tunes that seemed to be constantly playing in the background all over Grant Avenue and Stockton Street was the theme song from a popular Hong Kong television series starring Chow Yun-fat (周潤發), Ray Lui (呂良偉), and Angie Chiu (趙雅芝).
上海灘 - SHANGHAI BUND
In 1920's Shanghai two young men, Hui Man-keung (Chow Yun-fat) and Ting Lik (Ray Lui), become members of a gang headed by Fung King-yiu (played by Lau Dan 劉丹). Both of them have a serious crush on Fung's daughter, Ching-ching (Angie Chiu). For the next twenty five episodes, things go wrong in great style, ending with the death of Hui (Chow) outside a fancy restaurant on his last night in Shanghai.
You can see Hui being killed in this short clip:
As a side note, to me the scene above highlights precisely why smoking should be allowed indoors again; bad things happen when you have to go outside for a fix.
Of course, back in the eighties you didn't need to do so. You could have stayed inside, safe and out of harm's way. Since then, the non-smoking yutzes have obviously wanted us dead.
The series was a smash hit, and propelled Chow Yun-fat (the smoking gentleman in the photo above) to stardom. You may have seen him in any number of gangster flicks made during the eighties, in which he often played a man on the wrong side of the law, but with a strong sense of morality and ethics. What you probably remembered was the gallantry and likability of the character. A rogue and a crook, but an upright man with an admirable style.
The series also helped speed the end of the chip-on-the-shoulder style of entertainment characterized by every single Bruce Lee movie, most of which are only barely watchable, but only if you read Bruce Lee as a clown of monumental proportions, a veritable master of physical comedy.
By the mid-eighties, Hong Kong movies no longer took themselves quite so seriously, and many of the people involved had realized that as important to the genre as giving the viewers roles to identify with was imparting a sense of mood, and images of style. Shanghai in the twenties and thirties, as an exemplifier of both of those things, become a trope. Many of the classiest gangster films from that era (the eighties) are either set there, or recall that time and place in key ways.
Shanghai during the republican period was indeed all that. At that time it was a world city, and a trend-setter. A hotbed of international commerce and intrigue, filled with wheeler-dealers, crooks, secret agents, tycoons, and smugglers, as well as jazz, nightclubs, restaurants, tailors, and beautiful women.
It was the flash and dazzle of the shiny metropolis which the exiles who ended up in Hong Kong after the war missed most of all. The poverty and desperation of the time there was forgotten, the vibrancy and excitement remained. Shanghai was where China grew up.
Writers, intellectuals, and the Chinese entertainment industry had experienced a golden age.
The Shanghainese sense of pride in their city infected all Chinese, and in the fifties, after twenty years of war and chaos, it seemed like nothing like that would ever come again. The Twentieth century had, on the whole, proven rather miserable, and Shanghai by sheer contrast had seemed such a beacon.
[The video clip above is Chou Hsuen (周璇) singing Yeh Shanghai ('Shanghai at night'). One of my favourite songs by her is Moon Over the Street Corner, which can be heard here: 街頭月. Just open it up in a separate tab or window to listen, as the visuals are static. A television documentary about Chou Hsuen is here: 金嗓子.
Probably her most famous song is When Will You Return (何日君再來), recorded in 1937. Teresa Teng sang it in 1979, at which time the communists described it as an obscene pro-Japanese ode, and the Taiwanese government banned it because it could be interpreted as an invitation to the People's Liberation Army.
It's actually a plaintive love ballad.]
For the next two decades, things scarcely improved.
Shanghai had been the stage on which the ideals of revolutionary China had had their fullest play, and the arena where all movements had most memorably come to fruition. Nationalists and Communists, Imperialists and Missionaries, all had plotted, manoeuvred, and manipulated in Shanghai for several decades. When the Communists swept to victory on the mainland in 1949, that ended.
Refugees flocked to Hong Kong, and the British kept a tight lid on them for fear that the revolution would take away their European foothold in the Far-East. The exiles found safety in the Crown Colony, as well as stultifying boredom.
[A parting duet evoking exile, and the promise of return, can be heard here: 叮嚀.
As with the other links, right-click to open in a new window; static visuals again. Recorded by Chou Hsuen and Yan Hwa (嚴華) in 1939, two years before their divorce. It should be mentioned that they had known each other since their very early teens, when both were part of the Moon Song and Dance Society (明月歌舞團樂社), which produced many performers for the Shanghai movie industry who later became famous. They married in 1938, when she was 18 years old and he was 23.]
But their creativity was not routed into propagandistic insanity, as happened elsewhere; Hong Kong was an island of unexciting calm.
The gilded memory of Shanghai grew more glorious as time passed.
In reality, Shanghai had seen exploitation and bloodshed on an operatic scale, engineered by the Japanese, the warlords and bankers, Nationalists and the Communists, the gangsters of the Green Gang (青帮) headed by Big Eared Tu (杜月笙), as well as the British and French authorities in the concessions, and others. But it had also been China's first modern city.
Life had been more fast-paced, and there had been so many more opportunities for everything, including crime.
By the late seventies, the Shanghai of legend was larger than life; all good things, all style, all greatness and grandness, everything worthwhile in Chinese popular culture, had a place in the myth.
The mainland and Taiwan both failed to offer realities that matched.
And Hong Kong was realizing that it, in part, was the primary heir.
Shanghai as it had been was gone. But there was money to be made off the corpse, and lovingly the authors, actors, and directors mined the material.
It was not so much cannibalism as regurgitation of cultural themes which by that time had become instinctive, an inherent part of their make-up and their welt-anschauung.
Their interpretation was in truth a version more Hong Kong than Shanghai, just as the gangster movies set in the Hong Kong of that day and age also shaded, gilded, and repainted the facts to fit a tale.
The results were often stellar.
Fantasy is, in the final regard, what art is all about.
The Shanghai of the show had never existed in real life, but was built on a sound stage in Kowloon Tong (九龍塘), Hong Kong. None of the main actors have any connection to Shanghai either. Chow Yun-fat is of Hakka ancestry, born on Lamma Island (南丫島), Ray Lui is Chinese from Vietnam, Danny Lau (Lau Dan) is a native of Shantung, Kent Tong is a Hong Kong native.....
Even the singer who made the series theme song famous (Frances Yip 葉麗儀) is local (and like Chow Yun-fat, of Hakka ancestry).
Only the executive under whose aegis the show was produced can arguably even be called Shanghainese: Run Run Shaw ((邵逸夫) was the son of a textile merchant from Chekiang based in that city. He moved to Singapore when he was nineteen in 1926. He and his brother founded South Sea Film (南洋影片), which later became Shaw Brothers Studio and was headquartered in Hong Kong, in 1930.
When the television series came out in 1980, over a generation had passed since the period portrayed.
What the show represents is a fairy-tale of a different era, one comfortably remote enough that it need not impinge upon the present. Both of the men about whom the stories revolve are in love with the good girl, but only one of them really stands a chance. And although she is the daughter of a gang leader, Ching Ching really does represent an ideal of femininity and Chinese womanhood. She is the one good thing that stands out above all else in the violent and sordid world in which her two suitors by necessity find themselves, and inspires their continuing humanity.
In the tale, successful gangsters and thugs are not always coarse and vulgar, but can indeed represent the same gallantries, idealism, and gentlemanly qualities that Chinese have always aspired to. Circumstance may determine one's station in life, but the person should nevertheless be faithful to what is civilized and worthwhile.
True to the constraints of real life, however, this tale is at times convoluted and messy. After having worked for Fung for several years, Hui (Chow Yun-fat) settles in Hong Kong, later returning to Shanghai. For both the very highest of motives as well as personal vengeance, Hui ends up killing Ching-ching's father, who was co-operating with the Japanese, and whose paid goons had slaughtered Hui's wife and in-laws.
He dies on the night that he was going to leave for France to find Ching-ching, determined to make things right again.
One should always aspire to rectitude, but events may sabotage the attempt. That does not mean that it isn't worth doing, merely that life sometimes really stinks.
Constancy does not necessarily get rewarded.
But it's worth it for its own sake.
Other than casting ideal ethical conduct into a new format, the show also achieved one other remarkable result: anti-heroes who dressed with style and pizzaz, and didn't act like idiots.
These were men that one could emulate, if not in actual life, but in personal behaviour and attitude. Instead of goobers wearing floppy kung-fu pajamas, Hong Kong television and movie screens started showing gangsters and crime-fighters with realistic clothing. The violence and moral questions were still there, but the characters had fleshed-out.
Up till the seventies, Hong Kong cinema had always shown right and wrong simplistically, with few shades of grey. All of sudden (actually, over a period of five or six years) snappy suits and multiple shades of grey became the norm, and the stories more complex and challenging.
Of course, for the juvenile delinquent element black and white was still the most recognizable facet, but they started aspiring to better presentation.
Clothes may not make the man, but they make the man much more.
It's that sense of real people, admirable individuals, rather than strictly two-dimensional epitomes, that made Hong Kong movies during the mid to late eighties worth watching. You might judge the actions reprehensible, but the characters were more complex and understandable in their responses.
And afterwards much of them stayed with you.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It is delicious with good nutrients from the sea, best served as snack with your favourite drink: tempura seaweed, spicy flavour. Yumminess in a re-sealable bag, invented by a computer game nerd.
Manufacturing facilities are in Nonthaburi and Pathumthani.
Naturally I washed it down with Jameson's Irish Whiskey. Which is a fine product of the Pernod Ricard Company in France, though founded by a Scotsman in Dublin. After which I smoked an English pipe tobacco produced by a factory in Germany.
Life may not be multicultural, but my habits are.
Though you might say "messed up".
I will blame exposure during my mis-spent youth for some of that.
In the mid-eighties I moved to North Beach, which is next to Chinatown.One of the tunes that seemed to be constantly playing in the background all over Grant Avenue and Stockton Street was the theme song from a popular Hong Kong television series starring Chow Yun-fat (周潤發), Ray Lui (呂良偉), and Angie Chiu (趙雅芝).
上海灘 - SHANGHAI BUND
In 1920's Shanghai two young men, Hui Man-keung (Chow Yun-fat) and Ting Lik (Ray Lui), become members of a gang headed by Fung King-yiu (played by Lau Dan 劉丹). Both of them have a serious crush on Fung's daughter, Ching-ching (Angie Chiu). For the next twenty five episodes, things go wrong in great style, ending with the death of Hui (Chow) outside a fancy restaurant on his last night in Shanghai.
You can see Hui being killed in this short clip:
As a side note, to me the scene above highlights precisely why smoking should be allowed indoors again; bad things happen when you have to go outside for a fix.
The series was a smash hit, and propelled Chow Yun-fat (the smoking gentleman in the photo above) to stardom. You may have seen him in any number of gangster flicks made during the eighties, in which he often played a man on the wrong side of the law, but with a strong sense of morality and ethics. What you probably remembered was the gallantry and likability of the character. A rogue and a crook, but an upright man with an admirable style.
The series also helped speed the end of the chip-on-the-shoulder style of entertainment characterized by every single Bruce Lee movie, most of which are only barely watchable, but only if you read Bruce Lee as a clown of monumental proportions, a veritable master of physical comedy.
By the mid-eighties, Hong Kong movies no longer took themselves quite so seriously, and many of the people involved had realized that as important to the genre as giving the viewers roles to identify with was imparting a sense of mood, and images of style. Shanghai in the twenties and thirties, as an exemplifier of both of those things, become a trope. Many of the classiest gangster films from that era (the eighties) are either set there, or recall that time and place in key ways.
Shanghai during the republican period was indeed all that. At that time it was a world city, and a trend-setter. A hotbed of international commerce and intrigue, filled with wheeler-dealers, crooks, secret agents, tycoons, and smugglers, as well as jazz, nightclubs, restaurants, tailors, and beautiful women.
It was the flash and dazzle of the shiny metropolis which the exiles who ended up in Hong Kong after the war missed most of all. The poverty and desperation of the time there was forgotten, the vibrancy and excitement remained. Shanghai was where China grew up.
Writers, intellectuals, and the Chinese entertainment industry had experienced a golden age.
The Shanghainese sense of pride in their city infected all Chinese, and in the fifties, after twenty years of war and chaos, it seemed like nothing like that would ever come again. The Twentieth century had, on the whole, proven rather miserable, and Shanghai by sheer contrast had seemed such a beacon.
[The video clip above is Chou Hsuen (周璇) singing Yeh Shanghai ('Shanghai at night'). One of my favourite songs by her is Moon Over the Street Corner, which can be heard here: 街頭月. Just open it up in a separate tab or window to listen, as the visuals are static. A television documentary about Chou Hsuen is here: 金嗓子.
Probably her most famous song is When Will You Return (何日君再來), recorded in 1937. Teresa Teng sang it in 1979, at which time the communists described it as an obscene pro-Japanese ode, and the Taiwanese government banned it because it could be interpreted as an invitation to the People's Liberation Army.
It's actually a plaintive love ballad.]
For the next two decades, things scarcely improved.
Shanghai had been the stage on which the ideals of revolutionary China had had their fullest play, and the arena where all movements had most memorably come to fruition. Nationalists and Communists, Imperialists and Missionaries, all had plotted, manoeuvred, and manipulated in Shanghai for several decades. When the Communists swept to victory on the mainland in 1949, that ended.
Refugees flocked to Hong Kong, and the British kept a tight lid on them for fear that the revolution would take away their European foothold in the Far-East. The exiles found safety in the Crown Colony, as well as stultifying boredom.
[A parting duet evoking exile, and the promise of return, can be heard here: 叮嚀.
As with the other links, right-click to open in a new window; static visuals again. Recorded by Chou Hsuen and Yan Hwa (嚴華) in 1939, two years before their divorce. It should be mentioned that they had known each other since their very early teens, when both were part of the Moon Song and Dance Society (明月歌舞團樂社), which produced many performers for the Shanghai movie industry who later became famous. They married in 1938, when she was 18 years old and he was 23.]
But their creativity was not routed into propagandistic insanity, as happened elsewhere; Hong Kong was an island of unexciting calm.
The gilded memory of Shanghai grew more glorious as time passed.
In reality, Shanghai had seen exploitation and bloodshed on an operatic scale, engineered by the Japanese, the warlords and bankers, Nationalists and the Communists, the gangsters of the Green Gang (青帮) headed by Big Eared Tu (杜月笙), as well as the British and French authorities in the concessions, and others. But it had also been China's first modern city.
Life had been more fast-paced, and there had been so many more opportunities for everything, including crime.
By the late seventies, the Shanghai of legend was larger than life; all good things, all style, all greatness and grandness, everything worthwhile in Chinese popular culture, had a place in the myth.
The mainland and Taiwan both failed to offer realities that matched.
And Hong Kong was realizing that it, in part, was the primary heir.
It was not so much cannibalism as regurgitation of cultural themes which by that time had become instinctive, an inherent part of their make-up and their welt-anschauung.
Their interpretation was in truth a version more Hong Kong than Shanghai, just as the gangster movies set in the Hong Kong of that day and age also shaded, gilded, and repainted the facts to fit a tale.
The results were often stellar.
Fantasy is, in the final regard, what art is all about.
Even the singer who made the series theme song famous (Frances Yip 葉麗儀) is local (and like Chow Yun-fat, of Hakka ancestry).
Only the executive under whose aegis the show was produced can arguably even be called Shanghainese: Run Run Shaw ((邵逸夫) was the son of a textile merchant from Chekiang based in that city. He moved to Singapore when he was nineteen in 1926. He and his brother founded South Sea Film (南洋影片), which later became Shaw Brothers Studio and was headquartered in Hong Kong, in 1930.
When the television series came out in 1980, over a generation had passed since the period portrayed.
What the show represents is a fairy-tale of a different era, one comfortably remote enough that it need not impinge upon the present. Both of the men about whom the stories revolve are in love with the good girl, but only one of them really stands a chance. And although she is the daughter of a gang leader, Ching Ching really does represent an ideal of femininity and Chinese womanhood. She is the one good thing that stands out above all else in the violent and sordid world in which her two suitors by necessity find themselves, and inspires their continuing humanity.
In the tale, successful gangsters and thugs are not always coarse and vulgar, but can indeed represent the same gallantries, idealism, and gentlemanly qualities that Chinese have always aspired to. Circumstance may determine one's station in life, but the person should nevertheless be faithful to what is civilized and worthwhile.
True to the constraints of real life, however, this tale is at times convoluted and messy. After having worked for Fung for several years, Hui (Chow Yun-fat) settles in Hong Kong, later returning to Shanghai. For both the very highest of motives as well as personal vengeance, Hui ends up killing Ching-ching's father, who was co-operating with the Japanese, and whose paid goons had slaughtered Hui's wife and in-laws.
He dies on the night that he was going to leave for France to find Ching-ching, determined to make things right again.
One should always aspire to rectitude, but events may sabotage the attempt. That does not mean that it isn't worth doing, merely that life sometimes really stinks.
Constancy does not necessarily get rewarded.
But it's worth it for its own sake.
Other than casting ideal ethical conduct into a new format, the show also achieved one other remarkable result: anti-heroes who dressed with style and pizzaz, and didn't act like idiots.
These were men that one could emulate, if not in actual life, but in personal behaviour and attitude. Instead of goobers wearing floppy kung-fu pajamas, Hong Kong television and movie screens started showing gangsters and crime-fighters with realistic clothing. The violence and moral questions were still there, but the characters had fleshed-out.
Up till the seventies, Hong Kong cinema had always shown right and wrong simplistically, with few shades of grey. All of sudden (actually, over a period of five or six years) snappy suits and multiple shades of grey became the norm, and the stories more complex and challenging.
Of course, for the juvenile delinquent element black and white was still the most recognizable facet, but they started aspiring to better presentation.
Clothes may not make the man, but they make the man much more.
It's that sense of real people, admirable individuals, rather than strictly two-dimensional epitomes, that made Hong Kong movies during the mid to late eighties worth watching. You might judge the actions reprehensible, but the characters were more complex and understandable in their responses.
And afterwards much of them stayed with you.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, August 06, 2011
KWUN TONG - HONG KONG'S CHANGING ORIGINAL SUBURB, PLUS A RESTAURANT
Kwun Tong is different, it isn't as you remember it.
Back in the fifties and sixties this was a newly developed residential and industrial suburb of Hong Kong, one of the very first built-up areas outside of Kowloon. Many apartment buildings were thrown up to provide housing for the influx of people from the mainland and the countryside who came to HK, and a multitude of factories employed many of them at fairly low wages.
You may recall cheap plastic flowers (膠花) in the sixties? They came from here.
This is where the Hong Kong plastic industry found its surest foothold, and most of the companies that remain in Kwun Tong still manufacture plastics, as well as consumer electronics, computer parts, and utilitarian objects.
[Kwun Tong (觀塘): "view ponds", formerly Kun Tong ('official ponds' 官塘). Originally an area of salt pans across the water from Tsimshatsui (尖沙嘴), which is on the western spur of the Kowloon Peninsula (九龍半島).]
Housing estates were built along the upper levels, facing Kai Tak (啟德機場 'kai tak kei-cheung'), but also in the flat zone along the typhoon shelter which separated Kwun Tong from Kai Tak.
The early multi-storey apartment blocks were miserable, horribly small, with shared bathrooms, kitchens, and washing areas. Many people lived crowded together in what were "affectionately" described as 雞寮 ('kai liu'): chicken coops.
During the early years, because of overcrowding and a lack of basic facilities, the roofs of many buildings were used for recreation and as school rooms.
Many of the older buildings have been torn down and replaced, and the airport ceased operating in 1998.
The whole area is now being 'renewed'.
Most of the locals are not very excited about that.
觀塘區
KWUN TONG KUI - KWUN TONG DISTRICT
From Ngau Tau Kok (牛頭角 'cow head horn') to Lam Tin (藍田 'blue field'): from the granite quarries and Amoy Brand Soy Sauce to the salt fields and the Lei Yue Mun (鯉魚門 'Carp Gate') highway interchange.
[Note that Lam Tin used to be called Ham Tin (鹹田): salty fields. Housing estates were built on the cerrito overlooking the coastal flats here.]
The older industrial area is a long grim rectangular stretch alongside the typhoon shelter, right across a narrow body of water from Kai Tak. It consists of fairly narrow streets, multi-storey factory buildings, cement apartment blocks, and broader commercial cross-roads leading to the housing estates on the upper levels. This neighborhood forms what could be called the third point of the triangle, the other points being Ngau Tau Kok and Lam Tin.
Tai Yip Street (大業街) crosses Kai Fuk Road (啟福道) before it turns into Kwun Tong Road (觀塘道). Tai Yip runs from north west to south east, parallel to the harbour and Kai Tak Airport. There's an interruption of three blocks, whereupon as if continuing Tai Yip Street, Hung To Road (鴻圖道) commences in the same direction, parallel to Wai Yip Street (偉業街) and Hoi Bun Road (海濱道), each nearer the water.
Between Kwun Tong Road and Hoi Bun Road, are a huge number of older commercial and factory buildings, within several blocks around the Tsun Yip Street Playground (駿業街遊樂場). The southeastern edge of this zone is the Kwun Tong Bypass (觀塘繞道), where it has turned east and heads towards Lei Yue Mun Road (鯉魚門道). The curve of Kwun Tong Bypass is roughly parallel to the southern end of Kai Tak, where the Kwun Tong Typhoon Shelter (觀塘避風) terminates.
To the immediate south of the area thus demarcated are the Sai Tso Wan Recreation Ground (晒草灣遊樂場) and Cha Kwo Ling (茶果嶺 'tea fruit peak').
There's a Seven Eleven near the corner of Tsun Yip Street (駿業街) and Hung To Road (鴻圖道). Across Tsun Yip is the 'East Harbour Seafood Restaurant' (Tung Kong Hoi Sien Jau Lau 東港海鮮酒樓) on the right hand side (east), and Wing Wah Mechanical Co. Ltd (榮華電工材料有限公司) on the left corner (west).
The area immediately surrounding Nanyang Plaza (南洋廣場) looks grungy as all git-out, although the Nanyang Plaza Building itself is rather impressive. This area mostly consists of multi-storey factories, warehouse and commercial spaces, and electronics businesses. After two long blocks Hung To Road crosses Hoi Yuen Road (開源道), proceeding one more block to King Yip Street, just before the Kwun Tong Bypass. At the end of the block, opposite the Yue Xiu Industrial Building, on the right hand side are two restaurants - the Hap Lei Hoi Sien Jau Ka (合利海鮮酒家), the San Ming Yuen Jau Ka (新明園酒家).
[The Cantonese term 'hoisin' (海鮮) means 'sea fresh'. It is one of the most important expressions in this food-obsessed culture.]
If you wish to park anywhere on the street here, good 你嘅 luck, ha?
It's entirely impossible!
There's a brand new promenade along Hoi Bun Road (海濱道) at the water's edge if you need a break from drear and drab. But getting there takes a little strategizing. And quite a few of the natives haven't ever been there.
You can see Tsimshatsui across the water, and also Central on Hong Kong Island to the south, dimly through the air pollution.
裕民坊與銀都戲院
YUE MAN SQUARE & SILVER CITY MOVIE THEATRE
The centre of town, east of the industrial stretch and north of all the fancy new housing developments and shopping centres is the area around Yue Man Square, where you will find most of the older business patronized by long-time residents.
The entire area is being renewed, and will have changed considerably in a few years, although there is a growing consciousness of the importance of local colour and tradition.
One 'landmark' which bit the dust is the old Silver City Theatre (銀都戲院) on Fu Yan street (輔仁街) at the west side of Yue Man Square (裕民坊), which had a run of forty six years before closing its doors forever in July 2009. Up until the mid-nineties, it showed mostly mainland movies, having no truck with the glib products churned out by Hong Kong studios, but declining attendance, changing audience patterns, and above all video tapes and later discs put paid to what had once been a thriving and beloved entertainment center.
Many old-timers fondly remember sneaking in as children, and occasionally drunks would doss down in the seats to sleep off their liquor.
It, too, is slated for 'renewal'.
上海榮華川菜館
SEUNG HOI WING WAH CHUEN TSOI KOON
The Shanghai Wing Wah Szechuan Restaurant
Ground Floor, 15 Shung Yan Street, Kwun Tong.
[觀塘, 崇仁街 15號, 地下]
This long-established business is small, but quite good. It's on the corner of Fu Yan Street and a nondescript alley way (崇仁街 Shung Yan Street), right were Fu Yan Street turns west, on the ground floor of a twelve or thirteen storey old-style apartment building, right next to a Yunnan eatery, opposite grocery stores and a meat market. This, really, is home turf for many people. The red-topped bus lines go up this street from Yue Man Square.
It's barely a five minute walk from the old Silver City Theatre.
Family run, clean, fast, and often very busy. But the prices are reasonable, and the food is excellent.
Expect to pay between HK$ 30 to 60 for lunch, between HK$ 75 and 150 for dinner.
One thing you MUST try are the Shanghai Soup Dumplings (小籠包). They are known for them.
Shanghai Soup Dumplings are one of those things people will passionately disagree about, but the plain fact of the matter is that speed is the essential quality. If it takes too long to dish them up, the hot broth will have melded into the dough. Either way, there will be a bone-soup taste to the item.
Lovely when hot, gummy when cold.
RECOMMENDED DISHES
豆沙窩餅 Fried Sweet Bean-paste Fold-overs. Very Shanghainese!
東坡肉 Tung-Po Pork (slow cooked long and fragrant, served over tender fresh baby bokchoi).
回鍋肉 Twice-cooked Pork - a superior version.
砂鍋雲吞雞 Clay Pot Wonton Chicken.
擔擔麵 Tan Tan Noodles. Superior, but something I'm particularly fond of.
酸辣湯 Hot and Sour Soup - extremely popular here.
紅燒獅子頭 Savoury Braised Large Meat Balls.
乾扁四季豆 Spicy Dry-fried Stringbeans.
八寶茶 Eight Treasure Tea (hot) - very popular.
糖醋魚柳 Sweet and Sour Willow-fish.
糖醋排骨 Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs.
紅油抄手 Red Oil Dumplings - a famous Szechuanese variation on wonton.
口水雞 Poached & Sauced Chicken.
花雕醉雞 Drunken Chicken (made with Fa Diu ricewine) - very highly recommended.
蒜泥白肉 Garlic Sauce Poached Pork (cold) - very old-fashioned and delicious.
奶油津白 Tientsin Cabbage in Cream Sauce garnished with Chinhua Ham - old school, excellent.
糖醋魚塊 Sweet and Sour Fish Chunks.
麻婆豆腐 Ma Po Toufu - an old stand-by.
雞絲粉皮 Chicken Shred Pale Ribbon Noodle.
宮保雞丁 Kung Pao Chicken - a safe standard.
LAGNIAPPE - THE TSIM CHAI KEE RESTAURANT IN CENTRAL
沾仔記 Tsim Chai Kee Noodle
Shop B, G/F Jade Centre, 98 Wellington Street, Central
[中環, 威靈頓街 98號, 地下]
Black sign, gold characters. Lunch time line outside.
Recommended Dishes:
鯪魚球雲吞 Ling-fish balls with wonton
牛肉河招牌雲吞麵 Beef brisket house special wonton noodles
鮮蝦雲吞麵 Fresh shrimp wonton noodles
A friend came back from Hong Kong, and tells me that while Mak's wonton are good, Jim's shrimp wonton are much better.
Quote: "biggest darn shrimp EVER! Ho taai-ge, ho mei-ge, sahp fan ji sahp SAN-SIEN" (very big, very tasty, one hundred percent FRESH).
I'll take his word for it. Sometime I'll have to try them myself.
But I do wish he wasn't quite so boastful and gloating over his discovery.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly: LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Back in the fifties and sixties this was a newly developed residential and industrial suburb of Hong Kong, one of the very first built-up areas outside of Kowloon. Many apartment buildings were thrown up to provide housing for the influx of people from the mainland and the countryside who came to HK, and a multitude of factories employed many of them at fairly low wages.
You may recall cheap plastic flowers (膠花) in the sixties? They came from here.
This is where the Hong Kong plastic industry found its surest foothold, and most of the companies that remain in Kwun Tong still manufacture plastics, as well as consumer electronics, computer parts, and utilitarian objects.
[Kwun Tong (觀塘): "view ponds", formerly Kun Tong ('official ponds' 官塘). Originally an area of salt pans across the water from Tsimshatsui (尖沙嘴), which is on the western spur of the Kowloon Peninsula (九龍半島).]
Housing estates were built along the upper levels, facing Kai Tak (啟德機場 'kai tak kei-cheung'), but also in the flat zone along the typhoon shelter which separated Kwun Tong from Kai Tak.
The early multi-storey apartment blocks were miserable, horribly small, with shared bathrooms, kitchens, and washing areas. Many people lived crowded together in what were "affectionately" described as 雞寮 ('kai liu'): chicken coops.
During the early years, because of overcrowding and a lack of basic facilities, the roofs of many buildings were used for recreation and as school rooms.
Many of the older buildings have been torn down and replaced, and the airport ceased operating in 1998.
The whole area is now being 'renewed'.
Most of the locals are not very excited about that.
觀塘區
KWUN TONG KUI - KWUN TONG DISTRICT
From Ngau Tau Kok (牛頭角 'cow head horn') to Lam Tin (藍田 'blue field'): from the granite quarries and Amoy Brand Soy Sauce to the salt fields and the Lei Yue Mun (鯉魚門 'Carp Gate') highway interchange.
[Note that Lam Tin used to be called Ham Tin (鹹田): salty fields. Housing estates were built on the cerrito overlooking the coastal flats here.]
The older industrial area is a long grim rectangular stretch alongside the typhoon shelter, right across a narrow body of water from Kai Tak. It consists of fairly narrow streets, multi-storey factory buildings, cement apartment blocks, and broader commercial cross-roads leading to the housing estates on the upper levels. This neighborhood forms what could be called the third point of the triangle, the other points being Ngau Tau Kok and Lam Tin.
Tai Yip Street (大業街) crosses Kai Fuk Road (啟福道) before it turns into Kwun Tong Road (觀塘道). Tai Yip runs from north west to south east, parallel to the harbour and Kai Tak Airport. There's an interruption of three blocks, whereupon as if continuing Tai Yip Street, Hung To Road (鴻圖道) commences in the same direction, parallel to Wai Yip Street (偉業街) and Hoi Bun Road (海濱道), each nearer the water.
Between Kwun Tong Road and Hoi Bun Road, are a huge number of older commercial and factory buildings, within several blocks around the Tsun Yip Street Playground (駿業街遊樂場). The southeastern edge of this zone is the Kwun Tong Bypass (觀塘繞道), where it has turned east and heads towards Lei Yue Mun Road (鯉魚門道). The curve of Kwun Tong Bypass is roughly parallel to the southern end of Kai Tak, where the Kwun Tong Typhoon Shelter (觀塘避風) terminates.
To the immediate south of the area thus demarcated are the Sai Tso Wan Recreation Ground (晒草灣遊樂場) and Cha Kwo Ling (茶果嶺 'tea fruit peak').
There's a Seven Eleven near the corner of Tsun Yip Street (駿業街) and Hung To Road (鴻圖道). Across Tsun Yip is the 'East Harbour Seafood Restaurant' (Tung Kong Hoi Sien Jau Lau 東港海鮮酒樓) on the right hand side (east), and Wing Wah Mechanical Co. Ltd (榮華電工材料有限公司) on the left corner (west).
The area immediately surrounding Nanyang Plaza (南洋廣場) looks grungy as all git-out, although the Nanyang Plaza Building itself is rather impressive. This area mostly consists of multi-storey factories, warehouse and commercial spaces, and electronics businesses. After two long blocks Hung To Road crosses Hoi Yuen Road (開源道), proceeding one more block to King Yip Street, just before the Kwun Tong Bypass. At the end of the block, opposite the Yue Xiu Industrial Building, on the right hand side are two restaurants - the Hap Lei Hoi Sien Jau Ka (合利海鮮酒家), the San Ming Yuen Jau Ka (新明園酒家).
[The Cantonese term 'hoisin' (海鮮) means 'sea fresh'. It is one of the most important expressions in this food-obsessed culture.]
If you wish to park anywhere on the street here, good 你嘅 luck, ha?
It's entirely impossible!
There's a brand new promenade along Hoi Bun Road (海濱道) at the water's edge if you need a break from drear and drab. But getting there takes a little strategizing. And quite a few of the natives haven't ever been there.
You can see Tsimshatsui across the water, and also Central on Hong Kong Island to the south, dimly through the air pollution.
裕民坊與銀都戲院
YUE MAN SQUARE & SILVER CITY MOVIE THEATRE
The centre of town, east of the industrial stretch and north of all the fancy new housing developments and shopping centres is the area around Yue Man Square, where you will find most of the older business patronized by long-time residents.
The entire area is being renewed, and will have changed considerably in a few years, although there is a growing consciousness of the importance of local colour and tradition.
One 'landmark' which bit the dust is the old Silver City Theatre (銀都戲院) on Fu Yan street (輔仁街) at the west side of Yue Man Square (裕民坊), which had a run of forty six years before closing its doors forever in July 2009. Up until the mid-nineties, it showed mostly mainland movies, having no truck with the glib products churned out by Hong Kong studios, but declining attendance, changing audience patterns, and above all video tapes and later discs put paid to what had once been a thriving and beloved entertainment center.
Many old-timers fondly remember sneaking in as children, and occasionally drunks would doss down in the seats to sleep off their liquor.
It, too, is slated for 'renewal'.
上海榮華川菜館
SEUNG HOI WING WAH CHUEN TSOI KOON
The Shanghai Wing Wah Szechuan Restaurant
Ground Floor, 15 Shung Yan Street, Kwun Tong.
[觀塘, 崇仁街 15號, 地下]
This long-established business is small, but quite good. It's on the corner of Fu Yan Street and a nondescript alley way (崇仁街 Shung Yan Street), right were Fu Yan Street turns west, on the ground floor of a twelve or thirteen storey old-style apartment building, right next to a Yunnan eatery, opposite grocery stores and a meat market. This, really, is home turf for many people. The red-topped bus lines go up this street from Yue Man Square.
It's barely a five minute walk from the old Silver City Theatre.
Family run, clean, fast, and often very busy. But the prices are reasonable, and the food is excellent.
Expect to pay between HK$ 30 to 60 for lunch, between HK$ 75 and 150 for dinner.
One thing you MUST try are the Shanghai Soup Dumplings (小籠包). They are known for them.
Shanghai Soup Dumplings are one of those things people will passionately disagree about, but the plain fact of the matter is that speed is the essential quality. If it takes too long to dish them up, the hot broth will have melded into the dough. Either way, there will be a bone-soup taste to the item.
Lovely when hot, gummy when cold.
RECOMMENDED DISHES
豆沙窩餅 Fried Sweet Bean-paste Fold-overs. Very Shanghainese!
東坡肉 Tung-Po Pork (slow cooked long and fragrant, served over tender fresh baby bokchoi).
回鍋肉 Twice-cooked Pork - a superior version.
砂鍋雲吞雞 Clay Pot Wonton Chicken.
擔擔麵 Tan Tan Noodles. Superior, but something I'm particularly fond of.
酸辣湯 Hot and Sour Soup - extremely popular here.
紅燒獅子頭 Savoury Braised Large Meat Balls.
乾扁四季豆 Spicy Dry-fried Stringbeans.
八寶茶 Eight Treasure Tea (hot) - very popular.
糖醋魚柳 Sweet and Sour Willow-fish.
糖醋排骨 Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs.
紅油抄手 Red Oil Dumplings - a famous Szechuanese variation on wonton.
口水雞 Poached & Sauced Chicken.
花雕醉雞 Drunken Chicken (made with Fa Diu ricewine) - very highly recommended.
蒜泥白肉 Garlic Sauce Poached Pork (cold) - very old-fashioned and delicious.
奶油津白 Tientsin Cabbage in Cream Sauce garnished with Chinhua Ham - old school, excellent.
糖醋魚塊 Sweet and Sour Fish Chunks.
麻婆豆腐 Ma Po Toufu - an old stand-by.
雞絲粉皮 Chicken Shred Pale Ribbon Noodle.
宮保雞丁 Kung Pao Chicken - a safe standard.
LAGNIAPPE - THE TSIM CHAI KEE RESTAURANT IN CENTRAL
沾仔記 Tsim Chai Kee Noodle
Shop B, G/F Jade Centre, 98 Wellington Street, Central
[中環, 威靈頓街 98號, 地下]
Black sign, gold characters. Lunch time line outside.
Recommended Dishes:
鯪魚球雲吞 Ling-fish balls with wonton
牛肉河招牌雲吞麵 Beef brisket house special wonton noodles
鮮蝦雲吞麵 Fresh shrimp wonton noodles
A friend came back from Hong Kong, and tells me that while Mak's wonton are good, Jim's shrimp wonton are much better.
Quote: "biggest darn shrimp EVER! Ho taai-ge, ho mei-ge, sahp fan ji sahp SAN-SIEN" (very big, very tasty, one hundred percent FRESH).
I'll take his word for it. Sometime I'll have to try them myself.
But I do wish he wasn't quite so boastful and gloating over his discovery.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly: LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
LITTLE SHANGHAINESE DUMPLING!
One of the things which spells home for almost any Hong Kong or Taiwan urbanite is the Shanghai soup dumpling.
Yes, the product was invented in Shanghai (actually in 南翔, a suburb), not in Hong Kong or Taiwan.
And no, it isn't a dumpling. It is a bun.
HSIAO LONG BAO 小籠包
The name means little steamer basket bun (pronounced 'siu long bou' in Hong Kong and San Francisco), and that doesn't really describe it. A springy dough packet is filled with a congealed soup made from pork meat and pork stock, then steamed till done. The dough will be bread-like, the filling will have liquefied. You are supposed to eat the little treacherous item with a spoon and chopsticks - the spoon to catch the rich broth which will spill out at first bite.
If you weren't forewarned, the hot liquid could scald your tongue and your chin.
Mainlanders usually refer to it as 小籠饅頭, which is as vague a term as 小籠包.
Though it may be called 'soup dumpling' in English, that is actually a mis-translation - the dough envelope is yeast-risen and bread-chewy, rather than rolled-out and pasta-like.
Think of it as a wonderful snacky thing, wonderfully warm and juicy. Just about perfect for a nice freezing San Francisco summer.
To up the zing, you can dip it in the small saucer of fragrant dark vinegar and slivered ginger that magically appears with everything Shanghainese.
飽餃店
SHANGHAI DUMPLING KING
3319 Balboa Street, at 35th. Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94121
415-387-2088
Ten siu long bao for about six bucks, among the best in the Bay Area. You can also have a pan-fried version (生煎包), which is a little chewier.
Noodles, scallion pancakes, potstickers, and, of course, real water dumplings.
The prices are good, the ambience is 'real food place', rather than "white person pulling up nose at anything that doesn't meet his high standards for decor".
It's in the Richmond district (列治文區), which means that it's a bit of a trek from the Chinatown-Northbeach neighborhood.
Opens at eleven, closes at nine.
鼎泰豐
In Taiwan, Shanghai dumplings are one of the famous menu items at 鼎泰豐 (Ding Tai Feng). Being, in fact, what kept that concern going when their original business started disappearing due to changes in the market at the end of the seventies, beginning of the eighties. The owner and his wife started selling Shanghai dumplings to make extra money, and did so fabulously well that they now have a chain of restaurants in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
And a location in Shanghai.
南翔饅頭店
This is the veritable motherlode. The Nan-Hsiang Mantou Dian is one of the original places for the Shanghai dumpling. They are located in Nan-hsiang on the outskirts of Shanghai. Nan-hsiang (南翔) means 'southern soaring'. Naturally it is northeast of Shanghai (上海) proper.
No, I have never been there.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Yes, the product was invented in Shanghai (actually in 南翔, a suburb), not in Hong Kong or Taiwan.
And no, it isn't a dumpling. It is a bun.
HSIAO LONG BAO 小籠包
The name means little steamer basket bun (pronounced 'siu long bou' in Hong Kong and San Francisco), and that doesn't really describe it. A springy dough packet is filled with a congealed soup made from pork meat and pork stock, then steamed till done. The dough will be bread-like, the filling will have liquefied. You are supposed to eat the little treacherous item with a spoon and chopsticks - the spoon to catch the rich broth which will spill out at first bite.
If you weren't forewarned, the hot liquid could scald your tongue and your chin.
Mainlanders usually refer to it as 小籠饅頭, which is as vague a term as 小籠包.
Though it may be called 'soup dumpling' in English, that is actually a mis-translation - the dough envelope is yeast-risen and bread-chewy, rather than rolled-out and pasta-like.
Think of it as a wonderful snacky thing, wonderfully warm and juicy. Just about perfect for a nice freezing San Francisco summer.
To up the zing, you can dip it in the small saucer of fragrant dark vinegar and slivered ginger that magically appears with everything Shanghainese.
飽餃店
SHANGHAI DUMPLING KING
3319 Balboa Street, at 35th. Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94121
415-387-2088
Ten siu long bao for about six bucks, among the best in the Bay Area. You can also have a pan-fried version (生煎包), which is a little chewier.
Noodles, scallion pancakes, potstickers, and, of course, real water dumplings.
The prices are good, the ambience is 'real food place', rather than "white person pulling up nose at anything that doesn't meet his high standards for decor".
It's in the Richmond district (列治文區), which means that it's a bit of a trek from the Chinatown-Northbeach neighborhood.
Opens at eleven, closes at nine.
鼎泰豐
In Taiwan, Shanghai dumplings are one of the famous menu items at 鼎泰豐 (Ding Tai Feng). Being, in fact, what kept that concern going when their original business started disappearing due to changes in the market at the end of the seventies, beginning of the eighties. The owner and his wife started selling Shanghai dumplings to make extra money, and did so fabulously well that they now have a chain of restaurants in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
And a location in Shanghai.
南翔饅頭店
This is the veritable motherlode. The Nan-Hsiang Mantou Dian is one of the original places for the Shanghai dumpling. They are located in Nan-hsiang on the outskirts of Shanghai. Nan-hsiang (南翔) means 'southern soaring'. Naturally it is northeast of Shanghai (上海) proper.
No, I have never been there.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
SHANGHAI BARBERS IN HONG KONG
East of Wanchai (灣仔) on Hong Kong Island is one of the more interesting parts of the world, where over the decades populations have shifted, merged, transformed. Previous occupants have left their traces in the strata, still partially visible to the untrained eye.
During the war, North Point (北角) had been one of the areas where the Japanese incarcerated POWs.
After 1948, there was a refugee camp for Kuomintang soldiers there.
By 1949, the Shanghainese started arriving.
Not all of them were well-off - many had lost everything - but they were determined not to be just generic members of the masses. They were Shanghainese, dammit, they had style!
When these exiles came to Hong Kong, they didn’t consider it a particularly civilized place.
By the early fifties, they had transformed part of the area into 'Little Shanghai'
Shanghai in the twenties and thirties was probably the most cosmopolitan city on the planet. And to its own natives, it was the centre of the universe. Famous restaurants, nightclubs, department stores... tailors... singing girls... theatres... banks, trading companies, and factories... movie studios... and barber shops.
By the late fifties, many of Hong Kong's best restaurants, nightclubs, and barber shops could be found in North Point.
上海理髮店
SEUNGHOI LEIFAAT DIEM: THE SHANGHAINESE BARBER SHOP
Once upon a time the Shanghainese barber shop was were all civilized gentlemen went to have their heads examined. And poked, and prodded.
Middle-aged exiles staffed the place, and one of them would cut your hair, clean your ears, comb and trim your eyebrows, then while massaging your neck and shoulders look speculatively at whatever eccentric facial growths you sported, as if to say "surely you don't want to keep that?"
You indicated that despite his superior insight into what the ladies would like (clean-shaven and smooth) you planned to keep your chin fur, and you'd leave feeling like a million dollars, you and your fine beard.
Ladies, and Shanghainese barbers, do not like facial hair - it makes a person look militaristic and thuggish (or, in my case, dashing and scholarly), and somehow it speaks of a lack of self-control (though contrariwise, I radiate measured propriety).
The Shanghainese barber never expressed this too strongly, knowing that you would come back, and in the fullness of time might see the light.
This was also the place you'd visit if all you needed was a shave or shampoo. The barbers would make sure you felt fully human again upon your departure. A Shanghai barber shop was a spotlessly clean temple to your head, and the priesthood in their ironed white shirts, black bow ties, and clean lab coats, had pride in their professionalism.
理髮全套 Lei-faat chyun tou = The complete treatment.
理髮修面 Lei-faat sau mien = Haircut and facial touch-up.
理髮洗頭 Lei-faat sai tau = Trim and wash.
單理髮 Daan lei-faat = Just a haircut.
剃光頭 Tai-gwong-tau = Shave entire head smooth.
小童理髮 Siu tung lei-faat = Boy's haircut.
It was affordable, and very civilized.
When I was in the Philippines, there was a Shanghai barber shop I went to in Binondo after the fancy-pants bakla at the hair palace in the Quad tried to make me look like a latin pop star.
A neat, clean, simple cut is always better than some pompadoured poofty wave, no matter what a pouting Philippino manggugupit thinks.
The Shanghainese barber understood that one wanted, nay, positively NEEDED to look presentable.
Not like dangerous muffin trash.
Plus he had tea, and imported cigarettes in a cedar casket for the customers to enjoy!
[He also spoke real English, with both excellent diction and interesting content, rather than that pretentious pakiklakalak patois I heard in Makati from the flouncy man.]
There used to be Shanghainese barbers in all of the major cities of South-East Asia.
Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Georgetown.
Several of them in Singapore also.
Here in San Francisco there are no Shanghai barbershops. What we do have is attentive Vietnamese who went to beauty school to qualify for their licenses. The Vietnamese barber shop around the corner from my house is very nice, and you can tell that the elderly owner was influenced by the Shanghainese, though he probably doesn't realize it.
He trims ear-hairs and combs the eyebrows of his gentlemen clientele.
He also insists on massaging my neck, and I leave feeling ten years younger.
There are few Shanghai barbers left. There's a shop in Kowloon, and one or two scattered around Hong Kong. There used to be one on Whitfield Road (威非路道) near Hoi Kok Mansion (海閣洋樓), before the intersection of Watson Road (屈臣道), But that area is getting more developed, and once Whitfield turns into Electric (電氣道), you're in office high-rise territory.
國賓理髮公司
SEUNGHOI KOKPAN LEIFAAT KONGSI: THE AMBASSADOR'S PARLOUR
One place still holding its own is the Ambassador Barber Parlour (上海國賓理髮公司) at 23 Lan Fong Road (蘭芳道) opposite the Lee Gardens Manulife complex (利園宏利保險大廈) in Tung Lo Wan ( Causeway Bay: 銅鑼灣) near Jardine's Crescent.
It's a celebrated antique at this point.
Get your hair cut before it's too late.
[Lan Fong Road is actually a misnomer, as it is just one block, between Lee Garden Road (利園山道) and Yun Ping Road (恩平道).]
The Ambassador has regular customers who make a pilgrimage at set intervals from distant places and outlying areas, as well as adherents who work or live nearby. Most patrons of a Shanghai barber shop are not Shanghainese, and not all Shanghai barbers themselves are either - some locals learned the craft from exiled masters, and pass it on.
It's about style, a sense of what grooming is supposed to be, and self-respect.
If you look presentable, it will encourage you to act like it. And eventually that will have become intrinsic, instinctive, natural.
Either that or it will inspire the police department to have a less jaundiced view of you and your otherwise suspicious presence.
A sharp haircut, a suit worn with snap and flair, and a fresh pack of imported cigarettes, and you can go stepping! You're looking good!
King's Road (英皇道) between Causeway Bay and North Point (北角) used to be the centre of the Shanghainese settlement. But by the sixties, Fukienese from South-East Asia started moving in, and the Shanghainese language can now hardly be heard anymore.
Since the nineties the entire area has undergone massive development.
Things change.
NOTE: The term 'Shanghai Barber Shop' has acquired a different resonance, one that has nothing at all to do with pre-war Shanghai, and isn't particularly decent or proper. So if people look askance at your query, it might be their age.
Or just their dirty minds.
We don't have any of those in San Francisco either.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
During the war, North Point (北角) had been one of the areas where the Japanese incarcerated POWs.
After 1948, there was a refugee camp for Kuomintang soldiers there.
By 1949, the Shanghainese started arriving.
Not all of them were well-off - many had lost everything - but they were determined not to be just generic members of the masses. They were Shanghainese, dammit, they had style!
When these exiles came to Hong Kong, they didn’t consider it a particularly civilized place.
By the early fifties, they had transformed part of the area into 'Little Shanghai'
Shanghai in the twenties and thirties was probably the most cosmopolitan city on the planet. And to its own natives, it was the centre of the universe. Famous restaurants, nightclubs, department stores... tailors... singing girls... theatres... banks, trading companies, and factories... movie studios... and barber shops.
By the late fifties, many of Hong Kong's best restaurants, nightclubs, and barber shops could be found in North Point.
上海理髮店
SEUNGHOI LEIFAAT DIEM: THE SHANGHAINESE BARBER SHOP
Once upon a time the Shanghainese barber shop was were all civilized gentlemen went to have their heads examined. And poked, and prodded.
Middle-aged exiles staffed the place, and one of them would cut your hair, clean your ears, comb and trim your eyebrows, then while massaging your neck and shoulders look speculatively at whatever eccentric facial growths you sported, as if to say "surely you don't want to keep that?"
You indicated that despite his superior insight into what the ladies would like (clean-shaven and smooth) you planned to keep your chin fur, and you'd leave feeling like a million dollars, you and your fine beard.
Ladies, and Shanghainese barbers, do not like facial hair - it makes a person look militaristic and thuggish (or, in my case, dashing and scholarly), and somehow it speaks of a lack of self-control (though contrariwise, I radiate measured propriety).
The Shanghainese barber never expressed this too strongly, knowing that you would come back, and in the fullness of time might see the light.
This was also the place you'd visit if all you needed was a shave or shampoo. The barbers would make sure you felt fully human again upon your departure. A Shanghai barber shop was a spotlessly clean temple to your head, and the priesthood in their ironed white shirts, black bow ties, and clean lab coats, had pride in their professionalism.
理髮全套 Lei-faat chyun tou = The complete treatment.
理髮修面 Lei-faat sau mien = Haircut and facial touch-up.
理髮洗頭 Lei-faat sai tau = Trim and wash.
單理髮 Daan lei-faat = Just a haircut.
剃光頭 Tai-gwong-tau = Shave entire head smooth.
小童理髮 Siu tung lei-faat = Boy's haircut.
It was affordable, and very civilized.
When I was in the Philippines, there was a Shanghai barber shop I went to in Binondo after the fancy-pants bakla at the hair palace in the Quad tried to make me look like a latin pop star.
A neat, clean, simple cut is always better than some pompadoured poofty wave, no matter what a pouting Philippino manggugupit thinks.
The Shanghainese barber understood that one wanted, nay, positively NEEDED to look presentable.
Not like dangerous muffin trash.
Plus he had tea, and imported cigarettes in a cedar casket for the customers to enjoy!
[He also spoke real English, with both excellent diction and interesting content, rather than that pretentious pakiklakalak patois I heard in Makati from the flouncy man.]
There used to be Shanghainese barbers in all of the major cities of South-East Asia.
Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Georgetown.
Several of them in Singapore also.
Here in San Francisco there are no Shanghai barbershops. What we do have is attentive Vietnamese who went to beauty school to qualify for their licenses. The Vietnamese barber shop around the corner from my house is very nice, and you can tell that the elderly owner was influenced by the Shanghainese, though he probably doesn't realize it.
He trims ear-hairs and combs the eyebrows of his gentlemen clientele.
He also insists on massaging my neck, and I leave feeling ten years younger.
There are few Shanghai barbers left. There's a shop in Kowloon, and one or two scattered around Hong Kong. There used to be one on Whitfield Road (威非路道) near Hoi Kok Mansion (海閣洋樓), before the intersection of Watson Road (屈臣道), But that area is getting more developed, and once Whitfield turns into Electric (電氣道), you're in office high-rise territory.
國賓理髮公司
SEUNGHOI KOKPAN LEIFAAT KONGSI: THE AMBASSADOR'S PARLOUR
One place still holding its own is the Ambassador Barber Parlour (上海國賓理髮公司) at 23 Lan Fong Road (蘭芳道) opposite the Lee Gardens Manulife complex (利園宏利保險大廈) in Tung Lo Wan ( Causeway Bay: 銅鑼灣) near Jardine's Crescent.
It's a celebrated antique at this point.
Get your hair cut before it's too late.
[Lan Fong Road is actually a misnomer, as it is just one block, between Lee Garden Road (利園山道) and Yun Ping Road (恩平道).]
The Ambassador has regular customers who make a pilgrimage at set intervals from distant places and outlying areas, as well as adherents who work or live nearby. Most patrons of a Shanghai barber shop are not Shanghainese, and not all Shanghai barbers themselves are either - some locals learned the craft from exiled masters, and pass it on.
It's about style, a sense of what grooming is supposed to be, and self-respect.
If you look presentable, it will encourage you to act like it. And eventually that will have become intrinsic, instinctive, natural.
Either that or it will inspire the police department to have a less jaundiced view of you and your otherwise suspicious presence.
A sharp haircut, a suit worn with snap and flair, and a fresh pack of imported cigarettes, and you can go stepping! You're looking good!
King's Road (英皇道) between Causeway Bay and North Point (北角) used to be the centre of the Shanghainese settlement. But by the sixties, Fukienese from South-East Asia started moving in, and the Shanghainese language can now hardly be heard anymore.
Since the nineties the entire area has undergone massive development.
Things change.
NOTE: The term 'Shanghai Barber Shop' has acquired a different resonance, one that has nothing at all to do with pre-war Shanghai, and isn't particularly decent or proper. So if people look askance at your query, it might be their age.
Or just their dirty minds.
We don't have any of those in San Francisco either.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
GARLIC CHIVE DUMPLINGS
Years ago on late evenings, I would head over to the DPD (一品香) on the corner of Jackson and Kearny, or the Taiwan Restaurant (臺灣飯店) at Broadway and Columbus for some water dumplings.
Water dumplings (水餃) are not the same as what Cantonese people call by that name. The northern version is a pocket of savoury filling inside a handmade skin, either boiled till done or steamed. It is the origin of potstickers, because if there any left-over they can be panfried the next day.
What the Cantonese call 水餃 are usually wonton, somewhat larger than normal, with a shrimp filling.
Both are fine products if done properly. But if you had a yen for shwei jiau, you will be incredibly disappointed when soei gaau show up. That isn't what you wanted to eat at all!
What is wrong with the world?!?
Oh woe! Profound despair!
Neither the DPD nor the Taiwan Restaurant still exist.
The corner where the DPD stood is now a Thai Restaurant, and the location of the Taiwan Restaurant has gone through several incarnations in the last decade - Mexican grill, Arab pizza joint, bankrupt business, and pizza joint again. Plus something else that lasted so short a while in between pizza joint and bankrupt (or bankrupt and pizza joint) that I cannot remember what it was.
There is almost nowhere in the old neighborhood where one can get real Northern Dumplings.
白加士街
[PARKES STREET, KOWLOON]
MTR station at Jordan Road (佐敦道) and Nathan Road (彌敦道).
At Jordan Road turn left.
Parkes Street (白加士街) is on the right, runs three blocks from Jordan to Saigon (西貢).
CLEARLY VISIBLE LANDMARK: MacDonald's on corner of Jordan Road and Parkes Street. This is NOT why you are here. If all you wanted was a snack, the Wonton King (雲吞王) is in the middle of the first block of Parkes Street, on the left hand side.
It isn't especially good, but it's better than Mc-flaccid beef muck on sponge.
發仔記點心小廚 just up the block, same side, is marginally better.
However, further up Parkes street, on the other side of the intersection with Nanking Street (Namkeng kai: 南京街) well before Ningpo Street (寧波街), is an oasis.
There is a Seven-Eleven on the corner of Nanking Street, in case you are lost.
What you need is five doors up from the corner.
It's right next to 鹵鵝皇 (the Brined Goose Emperor). Kam Seng Jook Mien is on the other side. There's a Szechuan Restaurant right opposite (麻辣王).
唯珍上海麵家 WAI-TSAN SEUNGHOI MIEN KAA
125 Parkes Street, Ground Floor
Telephone: 2770 4763
Roughly translated, the name is "rare delicacy Shanghai noodle restaurant".
Except your focus is not so much noodles as the pan-fried pork cutlets - either with noodles or rice, or on top of soup - and most especially the garlic chives pork dumplings.
Everything here is 好新鮮 (ho san sien) - very very fresh!
豬扒 (chyu paa) pork cutlet.
韭菜豬肉水餃 (gau choi chyu yiuk soei gaau) garlic chives pork dumplings.
The dumplings are real Shui Jiao - water dumplings, northern type. Handmade skins enfolding a mixture of chopped pork and vegetable. Both the dumplings and the cutlets should be eaten with lots of hot sauce. Real hot sauce (mashed chili paste), bright red and juicy, rather than the typical brown-fried chili flakes in darkened oil common at many other dumpling shops.
真唔錯, 真好味! 食得爆呀!
It's a relatively small place, only one table for a large group, plus some 2 and 4 person seatings.
If you're rushed, just grab a flaky meat roll (餡餅) or a sweet bean turnover (豆沙餅).
Parkes Street is rather narrow, with just enough space for parking and two lanes in between the buildings. The Public Light Bus Service (公共小型巴士) red tops go up Parkes Street, the green tops go down Jordan Road.
昃臣街
[JACKSON STREET, SAN FRANCISCO]
A few weeks ago, on a rainy weekend evening, I left the office after dark.
On Jackson Street (昃臣街) between Kearny (乾尼街) and Grant Avenue (都板街) I found a new place. I had seen the owners preparing to open up for business quite a while back, but hadn't paid much attention at the time, other than to wonder how wise it was to open up their kind of business in a neighborhood populated mostly by Toishanese and HK immigrants on tight budgets.
上海飯店 BUND SHANGHAI RESTAURANT
640 Jackson Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-982-0618
Scoping out the menu in the window, what caught my eye was one key term: 韭菜豬肉水餃.
Yes! Garlic chives dumplings! Exult!
Had a full plate. Delicious. Tender delicate toothsome skins, perfect filling.
Glopped 'em with real hot sauce.
While I ate I listened in on the 老闆娘 telling her waiters which tables needed extra attention, make sure those kids don't hurt themselves, more peanuts, and will someone please answer the phone I don't speak English!
It is traditional to eat dumplings during the new year.
But I'm not waiting twelve months to eat here again.
This place is worth several second visits.
There's finally a place for water dumplings near home.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Water dumplings (水餃) are not the same as what Cantonese people call by that name. The northern version is a pocket of savoury filling inside a handmade skin, either boiled till done or steamed. It is the origin of potstickers, because if there any left-over they can be panfried the next day.
What the Cantonese call 水餃 are usually wonton, somewhat larger than normal, with a shrimp filling.
Both are fine products if done properly. But if you had a yen for shwei jiau, you will be incredibly disappointed when soei gaau show up. That isn't what you wanted to eat at all!
What is wrong with the world?!?
Oh woe! Profound despair!
Neither the DPD nor the Taiwan Restaurant still exist.
The corner where the DPD stood is now a Thai Restaurant, and the location of the Taiwan Restaurant has gone through several incarnations in the last decade - Mexican grill, Arab pizza joint, bankrupt business, and pizza joint again. Plus something else that lasted so short a while in between pizza joint and bankrupt (or bankrupt and pizza joint) that I cannot remember what it was.
There is almost nowhere in the old neighborhood where one can get real Northern Dumplings.
白加士街
[PARKES STREET, KOWLOON]
MTR station at Jordan Road (佐敦道) and Nathan Road (彌敦道).
At Jordan Road turn left.
Parkes Street (白加士街) is on the right, runs three blocks from Jordan to Saigon (西貢).
CLEARLY VISIBLE LANDMARK: MacDonald's on corner of Jordan Road and Parkes Street. This is NOT why you are here. If all you wanted was a snack, the Wonton King (雲吞王) is in the middle of the first block of Parkes Street, on the left hand side.
It isn't especially good, but it's better than Mc-flaccid beef muck on sponge.
發仔記點心小廚 just up the block, same side, is marginally better.
However, further up Parkes street, on the other side of the intersection with Nanking Street (Namkeng kai: 南京街) well before Ningpo Street (寧波街), is an oasis.
There is a Seven-Eleven on the corner of Nanking Street, in case you are lost.
What you need is five doors up from the corner.
It's right next to 鹵鵝皇 (the Brined Goose Emperor). Kam Seng Jook Mien is on the other side. There's a Szechuan Restaurant right opposite (麻辣王).
唯珍上海麵家 WAI-TSAN SEUNGHOI MIEN KAA
125 Parkes Street, Ground Floor
Telephone: 2770 4763
Roughly translated, the name is "rare delicacy Shanghai noodle restaurant".
Except your focus is not so much noodles as the pan-fried pork cutlets - either with noodles or rice, or on top of soup - and most especially the garlic chives pork dumplings.
Everything here is 好新鮮 (ho san sien) - very very fresh!
豬扒 (chyu paa) pork cutlet.
韭菜豬肉水餃 (gau choi chyu yiuk soei gaau) garlic chives pork dumplings.
The dumplings are real Shui Jiao - water dumplings, northern type. Handmade skins enfolding a mixture of chopped pork and vegetable. Both the dumplings and the cutlets should be eaten with lots of hot sauce. Real hot sauce (mashed chili paste), bright red and juicy, rather than the typical brown-fried chili flakes in darkened oil common at many other dumpling shops.
真唔錯, 真好味! 食得爆呀!
It's a relatively small place, only one table for a large group, plus some 2 and 4 person seatings.
If you're rushed, just grab a flaky meat roll (餡餅) or a sweet bean turnover (豆沙餅).
Parkes Street is rather narrow, with just enough space for parking and two lanes in between the buildings. The Public Light Bus Service (公共小型巴士) red tops go up Parkes Street, the green tops go down Jordan Road.
昃臣街
[JACKSON STREET, SAN FRANCISCO]
A few weeks ago, on a rainy weekend evening, I left the office after dark.
On Jackson Street (昃臣街) between Kearny (乾尼街) and Grant Avenue (都板街) I found a new place. I had seen the owners preparing to open up for business quite a while back, but hadn't paid much attention at the time, other than to wonder how wise it was to open up their kind of business in a neighborhood populated mostly by Toishanese and HK immigrants on tight budgets.
上海飯店 BUND SHANGHAI RESTAURANT
640 Jackson Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-982-0618
Scoping out the menu in the window, what caught my eye was one key term: 韭菜豬肉水餃.
Yes! Garlic chives dumplings! Exult!
Had a full plate. Delicious. Tender delicate toothsome skins, perfect filling.
Glopped 'em with real hot sauce.
While I ate I listened in on the 老闆娘 telling her waiters which tables needed extra attention, make sure those kids don't hurt themselves, more peanuts, and will someone please answer the phone I don't speak English!
It is traditional to eat dumplings during the new year.
But I'm not waiting twelve months to eat here again.
This place is worth several second visits.
There's finally a place for water dumplings near home.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
GRITS AND TOFU
Like most Americans, I have a list of people who should be peacefully retired from public service and thereafter kept away from their desks,...
