by Stephen Jack
Hong Kong – I was met at the airport by my old friend Jeffery at 9 pm. It made no difference that I said I had eaten on the plane and wasn't really hungry; by 10 pm we were ensconced in a Vietnamese restaurant in Yau ma tei with five dishes in front of us. I don't know Vietnamese cuisine that well, but to me it seems basically like Chinese with fish sauce and a few Gallic touches. In any case, it was good. We ordered a French beer bottled in Vietnam called 33 Export, just for the novelty of drinking a French beer. I had never thought of the French as beer drinkers, and now I understand why they are famous for wine and not ale. Our brew was sickly sweet even though it advertised itself as extra dry.
The next day, on our way to a late breakfast, we wandered through a produce market.
"Nearly all this stuff," said Jeffery, "comes from China or overseas."
It has been decades since Hong Kong has been able to feed itself, and if China ever turned off the big water faucet, many Hong Kongers would be dead of thirst within a month.
I felt like eating something typical and traditional. What I got was a bowl of congee with tiny dried fish and peanuts. I had eaten most of the congee when I discovered some pork pieces at the bottom of the bowl. One taste told me that the time lag between being butchered and served had been too long. So I left the pork alone. Instead I helped Jeff finish his three treasures soup; the 'treasures' being pork balls, fish balls, and wonton. We finished off with warm sweetened soy milk. Traditional enough, I thought.
With breakfast disposed of, Jeffery clearly felt obliged to show me one of the local tourist attractions. He led me a few blocks to what he called "the Temple Street Temple," but I'd seen it before and only gave it a couple of minutes attention. Jeffery is not a particularly energetic type, and all this activity had caused him to sweat. This required a rest on a bench in the small park outside the temple, and a couple of cigarettes. Scattered around the park, in various low-level states of consciousness, were a dozen junkies, looking like very ragged rag dolls - whether sitting, sprawling or staggering, none of them seemed to be equipped with a spine. If the movie Dawn of the Dead had been filmed here, the producers co uld have saved a bundle on extras.
I had forgotten how fast people drive in Hong Kong. Fast, that is when they move at all, as traffic gets jammed in many places. Still, it is wise to cross roads quickly and carefully, as local taxis become little more than dangerous red flashes as they speed around corners.
We wandered a few more blocks before Jeffery suggested stopping at a small restaurant. He wanted me to try a famous coffee/tea concoction. It did not sound appealing.. Sometimes it seems like the world is divided into two groups: the coffee drinkers and the tea drinkers. Surely coffee beans and tea leaves are opposing forces, and don't belong together in the same cup? Yuanyang (Yuenyeung in Cantonese) in fact is a delicious cold milky drink, unique to Hong Kong. The name literally means mandarin duck. Mating pairs of ducks are known for their devotion to one another and are regarded in China as a symbol of love and marital fidelity. This name was appropriated for this pairing of coffee and tea.
The skyscrapers that straddle Nathan Road, the main street, act as a conduit for heat and pollution from the traffic and air conditioners. Every time one of Hong Kong's trademark double decker buses speeds past - which is about every five seconds - a great, hot, foul blast is created.
To get out of this 'bus storm,' Jeffery shunted me through a nearby door. It belonged to the Yee Shun Milk Company, a steamed custard specialist. But we just had breakfast, I protested. I couldn't eat another thing! But I did, and it was a perfectly smooth, creamy and white custard that slid down my throat effortlessly. The taste, though definitely not the texture, reminded me of a Thai sago and coconut milk dish. Jeff had the egg version, which looked and tasted more like a western custard.
part 2 coming soon …
I wonder if the French beer terminology is similar to the wine lingo.. "Extra Dry" on a label of French bubbly would indicate an off-dry (i.e. somewhat sweet) wine. I've never actually sampled French beer. Although I did see it being drunk in Paris when I visited there a couple years ago.
Posted by: beau | 28 August 2005 at 17:39