The food heaven - memoir

            During my summer break in June when I was in 11^th grade in high school, my family (my little brother and my parents) and I traveled to my favorite city, Hong Kong: The food heaven. Fifteen thousands of restaurants. Business center of Asia. Coexistence of Chinese traditional culture and British culture from colonial period. Tiny land with people after people. Shopaholics’ shrine!

Even after I boarded on the plane, I anxiously read through the five Hong Kong guidebooks because I had this obsession of I should know everything about the country before I travel there. I was not a perfectionist, yet somehow I wanted to have a flawless trip in Hong Kong which was my first time traveling without a tour guide. I especially fantasized about Hong Kong as having same scenery of Hong Kong noir movies, skyscrapers, and all the people around the world, and they can speak English because Hong Kong is the one of the main globalized cities.

After flying for four hours, my family and I arrived to the Hong Kong International airport. Each country has its distinct smell. Whenever I traveled to different countries, I could magically experience certain smell existing everywhere in each country: same smell at corner of the streets, markets, buildings, restaurants, and hotels. Just everywhere. Started from the customs at the airport, the strong scent of Hong Kong ran into my face, and this smell was like warm and moisture yellow custard with comforting taste. On the way to catch a cab, my family and I walked by the sign saying “WELCOME TO HONG KONG: 欢迎huānyíng”. And that was when I definitely realized I was not in my own country.

I counted money for taxi fare in HK currency and held this money tightly due to my excitement and nervousness. Our cab took us to “Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong” in Central district. My mind was caught up with two facts: Only Chinese I know is how to say Hi (ni hao), and no one in our family, except me, knows anything about Hong Kong. I felt like I got a heavy duty to lead my family to have wonderful time while accomplishing to go all the tourist and famous places in Hong Kong’s guidebooks.

I brought all of the five tour guidebooks in my giant backpack, so my mom was yelling at me for me being an extreme “tourist”. My families were too tired from the flight that arrived at night. Contrasting to their lethargy, I was pumped up with all the fun facts about Hong Kong and told them, “Let’s grab some dim sums!” I picked the dim sum restaurant called “Serenade” in Tsim Sha Tsui district from a “The top ten choices for the best restaurants in Hong Kong: HK FOODS THAT YOU MUST EAT BEFORE YOU DIE”. That place was one hour away from our hotel by a bus. My family was frustrated with my selfish enthusiasm and told me that they would rather go to the bed because it was already 9 p.m. However, I didn’t care because I was a nerdy child in traveling, not being nerdy for actual school study. My over-achieving obsession drove my family to tour right away as soon as they put away their luggage.

            Hong Kong is indeed a city that never sleeps, so I thought as a tourist to feel a real sense of what is Hong Kong like, I believed that I should be awake and try every new thing. Going through the street vendors who sold eggette, gai daan jai, an egg custard waffle cooked over an open flame, my mind was occupied with my family and I tasting the perfect steamed dim sum consisted with roasted beef and soft texture of skin in Serenade restaurant. Hot night air of June, sweat of pedestrians, and this eggette’s smell of sweet egg batter in bite-sized mixed together. We had to overcome this sweet smell of street food and marched down the crowded avenue. It was the most crowded street I have ever seen– flashy red neon signs written in Chinese brightened the night, combination of old grey and new buildings, and oriental-style and western buildings juxtaposed together. Almost no gap between city jungle of buildings made me dizzy. After found a way to the bus stop for twenty minutes, we finally got on the bus, and it ran across Cross Harbor Tunnel that is in the middle of Kowloon Bay.

After few minutes in the tunnel, we got out from the bus and had to face with confusion of finding the way to the “perfect four stars dim sum restaurant, Serenade”. We went through the crowded street again, and this street was busier and crazier with more cars, beggars, people, and street vendors. The street filled with drunken young people entering the bars for the second round of their wild night, smoke floating into the polluted Hong Kong air cigarettes from office workers, and street vendors trying to get tourists’ attention to make them buy fake Prada bags and Omega wrist watches. I started to get nauseous after encountering all these flashing lights from neon signs, few palm trees on the road, listening to foreign language, and endless noises of this crazy city. My family and I walked for one hour, but we still could not find Serenade. I asked many natives about what is the direction for our destination, but most of them could not speak English – which was against my fantasy, so they avoided me as soon as I spoke English.

My mom asked me with exhausted voice, “hey, kid do you want to just go that restaurant?” while she pointed out the restaurant. I looked around my surroundings and saw numerous authentic Hong Kong take-out restaurants, but she picked one that looked like it was about to collapse. The restaurant looked extremely old, and some fungi attached on the front door was disgusting. I would resist to even get into this place if I were in the normal state; however, I wasn’t, so I said, “Sure! I cannot walk anymore!” Actually, I was so happy that there is actually a place to sit and eat finally, and I felt sorry for my family who was sacrificed from my greed. In the restaurant, there was no one except us and the old lady (who cooks and serves). I was worried about what if the foods here are not delicious and what if there is no dim sum. Looking through menu, we found dim sums (I realized almost all the restaurants in Hong Kong sell dim sums anyway since Hong Kong people eat it daily). I did not even have choice to select which kind of dim sum I wanted because I did not know any food in the menu because the menu was written only in Cantonese with pictures of foods. Without any hesitation, I pointed out Teochew-style dim sum dumplings. Our family each ordered different kinds of food for experimentation of unfamiliar food culture.

Our family walked down to the Kowloon Park which was easily found due to its elongated and large size of the place. I pulled out the take-out boxes, precious foods because these took a while to get once I sat down on grass. These foods were not exactly what I wanted, so I didn’t have that much expectation for good taste of them. However, as soon as I opened these boxes, my mouth watered because of the color of the foods were contrasting like coral reefs: brown dried pork strips over fresh bread, Pork floss and Teochew-style dim sum dumplings – consisting with grated garlics, peanuts, red peppers, white and soft tofu, pork, and translucent green lotus root and chives wrapped with chewy but transparent rice flour. My family and I started to dig into this breath-taking cuisine with chopsticks and spoons. We were exactly facing the Island of Hong Kong, central district while eating. The lights of buildings smeared onto the water of bay and waved back and forth. The ferry came and left from different harbors and gave tourists to take pictures of the night skyline of Hong Kong.

I tasted my Teochew-style dim sum. It was the splendid moment of my food journey. I joyfully chewed soft cover of dim sum and crunchy peanuts crashing together with rich-flavored pork and fresh lotus roots. I ate slowly because I didn’t want to waste my mix senses of tasting this food, seeing bright city night view and feeling hot breeze from summer bay current. Wonton noodle, shrimp dumplings wrapped with delicate flour and soft noodle dipped into a heavily flavored chicken broth also came down to my throat and warmed my stomach. Bojaeban, a bowl of steamed rice served with toppings of eels without fish bones and cilantro with lime and soybean oil. The skin of the eel was extremely soft like a cotton candy and savory because of its magical sauce. These foods had adequate amount of seasonings to awake my taste buds.

Then I said, “I guess the guidebooks do not matter to find best foods. I don’t know why I was so obsessed with planned trip. I thought everything will be perfect if I follow the perfect guideline for traveling.”      

My mom replied, “After all, all is well. See, I told you. You don’t need to be anxious about anything. The tip for having a great trip is that don’t plan. Be stupid and random. Unexpected things are more joyful than expected ones. Just go with the flow.”