7/8/07 - Dim Sum, Smog Over Xi'an

It was our last day in Hong Kong and I wanted dim-sum.

Dim sum was the origin of all my subconscious memories of China, the memories I would have had if I had been there earlier. Eating dim sum was the culinary culmination of all the memories and stories I had absorbed about China over the years, through my mother’s family. We would go to dim sum when I lived in Atlanta, a little kid, and I would eat shrimp toast and pork buns and spare ribs, and dream of Hong Kong. We went for dim sum often in Sacramento, and I would hork down chicken feet, squid tentacles, turnip cakes, and think “This must be what Hong Kong tastes like.”

So I wanted somewhere authentic, and I picked the Lin Heung Tea House, which was supposed to be very hostile indeed for silly white folks and thus utterly ideal. My dad and I disembarked from the cab in an empty alley, looking for the place – there was of course no sign in English. But up a flight of formica stairs we saw the carts perambulating and heard people yelling and tea cups crashing, and knew, this was the place.

We were seated at a tiny table with a silent couple and a perky looking guy in gym shorts, drinking dark black tea, out of those cups where you press the top down to keep the loose tea in and let the water out when you pour it. We immediately began ordering food:

Flat shrimp rolls in wonton wrappers, slipper, infused with black soy bean sauce.

Chicken feet wrapped in tripe with pork fat cake was delicious, fatty, and unctuous, a creepy sort of dish, and totally addictive.

Pork roll in rice wrapper, meaty and juicy, meat falling into the soy sauce mixture.

Pork meatball in tripe was oniony and crunchy, and I could taste the sharp chives rolled into the fatty meat, crunching off my teeth.

Shu mai shrimp rolls were the same as anywhere, the unifying factor between all Chinese restaurants breathing and crashing beneath the sun.

Sweet potato buns were incredibly delicious, a Chinese Thanksgiving treat. I’d serve these on platters at Thanksgiving and watch everyone devour them.

There were these special chicken buns we didn’t get, because whenever they came out, every person in the place would leap to their feet, waving their tickets, and mob the jolly lady who brought them out, jostling and fighting tooth and nail for these chicken buns, these chicken buns produced for the good and salvation of humanity. The man in gym shorts next to us cluck-clucked. “That’s so embarrassing, that’s really embarrassing,” he said in English, and we just laughed.

He explained. “They must be from the New Territories, up for the weekend, tourists,” he said as if we were not stupid tourists ourselves. He worked at our hotel, the Conrad, worked out in the gym there and showed us the insignia on his shorts. He had been to America, to San Francisco, and he thought it was fine but Hong Kong was better. We were introduced to the other people at the table, exchanged badly pronounced words in Chinese, and he gave us black sharp tea that kept me awake for hours. He said we had “made a very good choice for dim sum,” a “very good choice,” but I saw Anthony Bourdain’s signature on the door outside and felt vaguely cheated, outwitted again.

Mom and I went shopping, ducked into the rabbit warren of malls that defines Hong Kong, where everyone will go when the nuclear attack comes or the zombies prowl the streets below, I guess. Mom bought jelly tots, a remnant from her childhood, and horded them all. And then we checked out and whooshed down the elevator again and went to Lantau Airport, the most humongous airport I’ve ever seen. It had tremendous ceilings and long long walkways and people from everywhere in the world and more checking in and out and hauling around tremendous luggage carts full of souvenirs and silks and snack foods. I’m an experience airplane traveler but it was intimidating, almost beautiful to me.

I had a Diet Pepsi and watched my dad eat noodles, and then we boarded the plane to Xi’an. We talked to an Italian couple from Milan, the man ancient and blonde with blue watery eyes, the woman a gorgeous older Chinese woman, and they talked about the rigors of China, and how wonderful Italy was (we knew, we knew.) The man was a hunter, a fisher, and he talked in raptures about how he had depleted our California streams and forests many time before, talked about it as we boarded the urine-scented plane to Xi’an, listened to the tinny Chinese background music and ate our preserved-pickle inflight meals.

The Xi’an airport looked like it was shrouded in fog, but this is mainland China and it is not fog at all, it is toxic laden chemical smog. We got off the plane and I had my first experience with the infamous toilet-paperless mainland China bathroom, less said the better.

And then we met our guide, a small and adorable woman who insisted we call her Jennifer but had a real Chinese name I forgot, fool that I am. We boarded the van with Mr. Nii, the driver, and entered the black and empty highways that led into Xi’an, the occasional rich joy-rider blasting past us at 100 miles an hour. We saw people milling around on the dark streets, cooking kebabs, talking, waving fans and chasing dogs, and then we saw the ancient and huge city walls rise up, covered in yellow lights and people out late. They danced line dances around the shiny new Olympic statues, walked huge and exotic dog breeds, darted in front of cars. Xi’an seemed to be having a good time on a Sunday night.

We were staying at the Howard Johnson Ginwa Plaza, a modern and shiny new hotel in the Chinese fashion – all the modern tackiness, less of the class, and thus amusing as all get out. My room was huge and comfortable, and my view looked out over the walls and the moat, and the people dancing to techno music at 11 at night, the people walking and jostling each other later then my bedtime.

We went down to dinner past the rotating white grand piano with a goldfish in a bowl on top, past the bored looking valets. The buffet was a curious fusion of overcooked Western and overcooked Chinese food, and I ordered a bowl of mildly inedible noodles instead – they came with lunch meat. But I didn’t care, I was tired, and I ate a raspberry power bar in retribution, flopped into bed to the sound of techno music and laughter from the streets below.