People Are Staring
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: Still in Bangkok.
People Are Staring
I like to say that Lee and I have only had two real fights since we started traveling. One was in London, and the other was in Hong Kong. Both were over food.
The first one—the fight in Hong Kong— seems like a lifetime ago now.
Hong Kong is the historical epicenter of Cantonese cuisine, the crowning glory of which is dim sum.
Dim sum, if you’ve never been lucky enough to experience it, is a particularly excellent variation on the theme of brunch; the first time we had it was in San Francisco, in the early 90s. We’ve been huge fans ever since. Traditionally, you gather all your favorite people and sit together at a big table, preferably with a lazy Susan in the middle. Servers push carts around the restaurant, calling out the contents of steamer baskets and stacked plates. You point to what you want as each cart goes by, and the dish or basket is slung onto your table for everyone to share. You feel an exciting pressure to get the most special items as they go by, because they may or may not come by again. Copious amounts of green or jasmine tea wash it all down; after a really good dim sum feast, I’m buzzing with caffeine and good humor and the best kind of conviviality.
We arrived in Hong Kong on New Year’s Day, 2016. During the week we were there, this mostly-vegetarian never really figured out what to eat. I spent my days staring in windows, searching desperately for something that involved noodles or dumplings, but no animal bits. I couldn’t read the signs. I couldn’t ask questions. I couldn’t say ‘vegetarian’ in Mandarin or Cantonese.
I desperately wanted dim sum—I was, after all, in dim sum heaven. Even with just the two of us, surely we could try enough things to feel like we’d had ‘authentic’ dim sum. I did some research, and picked a highly regarded, traditional tea house. With some mapping and searching, we found it, spread over three floors of a nondescript office building. I thought I’d suss it out, explain my terror of chicken feet, and ask if they had any vegetarian items, but it was incredibly crowded, and we found ourselves first in a full elevator, then spilling out onto a nearly-full floor and being shuttled immediately to a table. The room was packed, steamy, loud, and full of middle-aged Chinese women pushing carts stacked high with piping hot food. It was, as our friend Miller says, like eating in a bus station.
I couldn’t figure out what to order; I couldn’t tell what might be vegetarian, or when something vegetarian might be coming out. Lee was hungry, and kept urging me to just point to something. I wanted to ask questions, but the servers looked at me and shrugged, repeating whatever they’d shouted as they wove through the room. No one seemed to speak a word of English. There was a pot of hot tea on the table, so I poured us each a cup and sipped mine, trying to shore up my nerve to join in the chaos.
Lots of servers passed by our table. Lots of unidentifiable dumplings and cakes and noodles and other morsels of goodness passed us by. Lee, finally beyond frustrated by my indecision, started pointing at things—and eating. He had no idea what he’d gotten, and he didn’t care. It was apparently all delicious. I sat there, drinking more tea and growing increasingly miserable.
I didn’t even like the tea very much; it was kind of weak, and didn’t have the delicate fragrance I associate with jasmine tea, and by extension, dim sum.
Lee eventually filled up, and figured out how to pay the bill, and we left. I was a muddle of frustration and resentment and hangry. We walked a couple of blocks, arguing about whether or not it’s even possible to be a vegetarian nomad. Or a vegetarian in Asia. Or a vegetarian dim sum aficionado. At a corner, we went in different directions. I dried my tears and consoled myself with a giant mango beverage that had tapioca pearls, and chunks of fruit, and whipped cream on top.
That was six years ago, and if I try, I can still remember exactly how I felt, sitting in that restaurant, paralyzed by self-consciousness.
Because that’s what it was about: my fear that people were staring at me, laughing at me, judging me.
And you know what I’ve learned in the years since then? People are going to stare at me. They’re going to know I’m a foreigner, and I have no idea what I’m doing or how to behave. That’s unavoidable. I am putting myself in that position of vulnerability, of being different and bumbling and needing help, just by showing up.
And I’m okay with that. They’re okay with that too—people may stare at me, but so what? Self-consciousness is one of the layers I began trying to shed, as soon as I realized how much it was limiting me. That’s what it means to step outside of one’s comfort zone, I suppose—to make a deliberate choice to push through the embarrassment.
The crowning glory of the whole Hong Kong episode was that pot of tea on the table. It turns out traditional dim sum restaurants put a pot of weak tea on each table; you’re meant to swish the tea around in your cup to warm it up and give it an extra layer of disinfection, then dump the tea in an empty bowl.
Yes, we drank it. No, it wasn’t very good.
Take care,
Lisa
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