Around The World In 80 Dinners Part 9

[image] TAJ M MAHAL P PALACE & T & TOWER www.tajhotels.com Apollo Bunder, Mumbai 91-22-6665-3366.

fax 91-22-6665-0323 For pleasure travelers, the extra expense of staying in the Palace Wing pays off.

Look broadly for good deals, which are usually available.

[image] BRUNTON B BOATYARD www.cghearth.com Calvetty Road, Kochi 91-484-221-5461 fax 91-484-221-5562 A gem.

[image] MALABAR J JUNCTION in the Malabar House hotel Parade Road, Kochi 91-484-221-6666.

breakfast, lunch, and dinner

[image] CASINO H HOTEL www.cghearth.com Willingdon Island, Kochi 91-484-266-8221.

fax 91-484-266-8001 Not as good a location for pleasure travelers as the Brunton Boatyard, but its Fort Cochin restaurant is the best in the area.

[image] SPICE C COAST C CRUISES www.cghearth.com Puthenangadi Jetty, Kottayam (no phone or fax) Highly recommended.

[image] COCONUT L LAGOON www.cghearth.com k.u.marakom 91-481-252-4491.

Serene retreat with good local food.

Fish Molee When fresh curry leaves aren't available, we use a handful of cilantro leaves. The flavor's not the same, but the herbal freshness is similar.

SERVES 6 6.

cup coconut oil2 teaspoons black mustard seeds1 cups chopped red onion1 cup diced red-ripe tomato2 plump garlic cloves, minced2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger1 or 2 serrano chiles, split lengthwise and seeds removed (mince part or all of 1 chile for a spicier sauce)1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste teaspoon ground turmeric teaspoon freshly ground black pepper1 to 1 pounds cod or haddock fillets, cut into 2-inch-wide sections1 cup coconut milk cup fish stock, clam juice, or water10 to 12 fresh curry leaves, or a handful of fresh cilantro leavesLime wedges Warm the coconut oil over medium heat in a large, deep skillet. As soon as the oil is fragrant, stir in the mustard seeds, and as soon as they begin to crackle and pop, stir in the onion. Once the onion has become limp, after about 2 minutes, stir in one-half of the tomato; add the garlic, ginger, chile, salt, turmeric, and black pepper. Fry, stirring up frequently, until the tomato has softened and begun to break down, about 5 additional minutes. Push the onion mixture to one side of the skillet and add the fish in a single layer. With a spatula, sc.r.a.pe up enough of the onion mixture to smear over the tops of the pieces of fish. Pour the coconut milk and stock around and over the fish; then scatter the curry leaves over everything. Cover and simmer 3 minutes; uncover and give the skillet a swirl, rather than stirring the mixture, which could break up the fish. Cook a few minutes more, uncovered, if needed to cook the fish through. The sauce will be fairly thin. Spoon into soup plates, garnish with the remaining tomato and lime wedges, and serve.

CHINA.

"DO YOU THINK WE OUGHT TO TAKE ALONG THE EXTRA bar of soap in the bathroom?" Cheryl asks as we're packing to leave India for Hong Kong. bar of soap in the bathroom?" Cheryl asks as we're packing to leave India for Hong Kong.

"What for?"

"For the YMCA, of course. Do you think the rooms have soap?"

"Cheryl, we're booked into an executive suite, not a dormitory. No one in Hong Kong makes executives walk around the city stinky."

"I don't know about this," she says, going to the bathroom to grab the soap just in case.

On our one previous trip to Hong Kong, twenty years earlier, we stayed at the Excelsior Hotel, an upscale establishment that offered rooms with great views of the harbor and the city, including planes cruising by at eye level to land at the old downtown airport. No concerns about soap there. Now our Cathay Pacific flight goes into the mammoth but sleekly efficient new airport, far out of the city but a quick trip in on an effortless express train to the Kowloon station, where we grab a taxi. Cheryl carefully watches the reaction of the lady driver when Bill gives her our destination, hoping for a clue of one kind or another about the Y, but the woman doesn't look back at us or change expressions.

The lobby provides a mixed preview. Large, colorful paintings by children hang on two walls, cheerful in their welcome but definitely not luxe hotel art. The cafe in one nook is a self-service, fast-food operation. No comfortable lounging quarters, concierge desk, Versace shop, or, of course, bar. But the reception desk brims with smiling young men and women smartly dressed in business attire. One of them registers us and gives us card keys for a room on the top, sixteenth, floor.

Bill unlocks the door and ushers Cheryl into a plainly furnished sitting area reminiscent of a Ramada. The sofa and matching upholstered chair look comfortable, at least, and there are little amenities like a TV, coffee maker, minibar, and fruit basket. Cheryl wanders to the other end of the parlor, opens the drapes covering floor-to-ceiling windows, and says, gasping, "G.o.d Almighty! Look at this." The view bowls us over, encompa.s.sing a vast sweep of the harbor and, beyond the water, the high-rise towers of Hong Kong Island and Victoria Peak. By the next day, we can even pick out the Excelsior Hotel in the panorama, where the view that stunned us before wasn't nearly this grand.

The wall of windows continues into the s.p.a.cious bedroom, curving gently in an arc around to the far side of the corner suite, giving us in all about four hundred square feet of vista wrapping around the king-size bed. An IMAX screen pales in comparison. Next door, the opulent Peninsula Hotel, visible in full, rises above us, helping to inspire the Y's advertising boast that "The Neighborhood Could Not Be Better."

"Look at those puny windows," Bill says, pointing to the cla.s.sy edifice, "and how much farther back they are from the water. The cheapest room over there with just a peephole view costs about three times what we're paying, and the penthouse, which seems to have the only comparable sights to ours, runs U.S.$5,000 per night."

"Be right back," Cheryl declares on her way to the bathroom. She returns momentarily with a wrapped bar of soap in each hand. "Not just one, but two. I think we'll be able to make do."

Hong Kong doesn't excite us in advance as much as most of our stops. None of our memories of the city put us off, but as a fast-moving contemporary metropolis, it's less fresh and novel to us than other places. It probably wouldn't have made the itinerary at all except for being the best Asian transit spot to our next two destinations, the Chinese mainland city of Chaozhou, where we will visit friends, and Cape Town, South Africa. India is closer than Hong Kong to Cape Town, of course, but there aren't any ONEworld airline flights between them, the reason we're zigzagging east to west and back again going from Bangkok to Mumbai to Hong Kong.

Only two activities really interest us in Hong Kong: walking the streets, as much a priority here as in New York or London, and eating good Chinese food. After admiring our view for most of an hour, we go outside and head north on Nathan Road, the Kowloon Peninsula's main thoroughfare, sometimes called in tourism talk "the Golden Mile." The fancy shops don't entice us because our focus-other than stretching our legs and looking around-concerns practical needs: some extra microca.s.sette tapes for our recorder, over-the-counter Excedrin migraine pills for Cheryl, and a computer center where we can burn our digital photos onto a CD for a backup copy. It seems as if all three should be available along the crowded commercial strip, but we find only the tapes.

Our walk takes us up to the Temple Street Night Market, where vendors are just beginning to set up for the evening. Most of the merchandise here wouldn't appeal to us, but the food stalls would. Not knowing when they'll open, though, we decide to catch a cab back toward the harbor for dinner at City Chiu Chow, which looked good earlier in the afternoon on a quick inspection. It promises a foretaste of the cooking of Chaozhou, which the Cantonese call Chiu Chow. The regional style is well known and respected in China but is much less commonly found in the United States than its Cantonese, Szechuan, and Hunan cousins.

A giant, one-story, free-standing image of a crab-covered with long, silky hairs that camouflage it in patches of seaweed-serves as a sign for the restaurant, as smaller drawings of crabs also do in Chaozhou. Sh.e.l.lfish and fish of all kinds are specialties of the cuisine, often served with zippy sauces. Other favorites include goose, frequently flavored with a garlic and vinegar sauce, duck, and shark's fin and bird's nest preparations. Chefs pride themselves on a variety of vegetable dishes, from deep-fried greens to sweetened taro, and also on elaborate vegetable carvings, which are used to decorate tables. Diners usually start and end a meal with an exceptionally strong oolong tea nicknamed "kung fu" and "Iron Buddha" because of its ferocious caffeine kick.

The waiter brings us tiny cups of the tea as soon as the hostess seats us. One large room, lively with conversation and laughter, the restaurant teems with businesspeople grabbing a meal between work and home. The menu doesn't prove terribly helpful to us, with just a few English descriptions of dishes and a smattering of photos, and none of the staff seems able or willing to speak English. By pointing to names and pictures, we manage to order deep-fried crab and shrimp rolls, a disappointment, and a "sizzling" freshwater yellow croaker that sounds like it would be fried but is actually poached in a light and delicate broth with toppings of Chinese chives, Chinese cabbage, fresh bamboo shoots, and bits of mushrooms. Our waiter demonstrates putting some of the fish in a small bowl with broth and a bit of chile oil, and then shows us a Chaozhou method of eating rice, pouring broth over it to make a soupy mixture to scoop up with a spoon. The standout dish of the evening, one of our favorite simple preparations of the whole trip, is wok-charred green beans cooked with bits of minced pork and black olives from China. "I'm going to make this when we get home," Cheryl says. "It's superb."

The stroll back to the hotel takes us along the promenade that fronts the harbor, where hundreds of people have gathered to watch the nightly Symphony of Lights, which the Guinness Book of Records Guinness Book of Records lists as the world's "Largest Permanent Light and Sound Show." Thirty-three of the most prominent buildings on both sides of the harbor project a dazzling array of beams into the sky, carefully ch.o.r.eographed in a sequence of patterns converging into a blazing crescendo. After we watch it for about five minutes from the waterside, Bill grabs Cheryl's arm and says, "Let's get upstairs to our room as quickly as we can." Seen from our bank of windows, the spectacle sets the heavens aglow like a dancing rainbow. lists as the world's "Largest Permanent Light and Sound Show." Thirty-three of the most prominent buildings on both sides of the harbor project a dazzling array of beams into the sky, carefully ch.o.r.eographed in a sequence of patterns converging into a blazing crescendo. After we watch it for about five minutes from the waterside, Bill grabs Cheryl's arm and says, "Let's get upstairs to our room as quickly as we can." Seen from our bank of windows, the spectacle sets the heavens aglow like a dancing rainbow.

Our walk the next day covers a bigger area, all of it on Hong Kong Island. The famous Star Ferry hauls us across the harbor to the Central District, the financial and governmental heart of the city. Architects come from around the world to see some of the contemporary skysc.r.a.pers-such as I. M. Pei's Bank of China Tower and Sir Norman Foster's Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation's structure-but we only glance at these briefly on our way to the historic and traditional Chinese warren of small streets called the Western District.

Our route along Des Voeux Road Central leads us to several pedestrian lanes, barely larger than alleys, packed with market stalls selling clothing, handbags, costume jewelry, and trinkets of all kinds. Deeper into the neighborhood, the businesses get more exotic, selling "chops," or personalized, carved stamps for doc.u.ments or possessions, intricate bamboo birdcages, death money for the afterlife, antique snuff bottles, and an incredible range of food and medicinal items, including ginseng, preserved sea slugs, dried fish bladders, twigs, seeds, powdered horns of different animals, and live snakes (favored in a warming winter soup and in a rheumatism cure, where the patient swallows the gallbladder in a gla.s.s of Chinese wine).

Some of the same edibles-but not the snakes-show up in two major food markets, one in the enclosed Sheung Wan complex and the other outdoors around Graham and Gage streets. The first requires a strong stomach, particularly in the downstairs fish and poultry section, where the Chinese desire for freshness results in some on-the-spot butchering and cooking. The breadth of produce on the upper floor makes us stagger: perhaps all of the two hundred varieties of Chinese bra.s.sicas (cabbages, broccolis, etc.), tofu of a thousand nuances, eggplants of every color and size, grapes almost as big as golf b.a.l.l.s, mountains of bean sprouts, and pyramids of eggs, oranges, and tangerines.

The street market features a similar range of vegetables and fruits, plus flowers-orchids, peonies, proteas, roses, daisies, mums, and more-tanks of fish and seafood to take home live, sausages, hand-size k.n.o.bs of ginger, lotus seeds, gingko nuts, fresh water chestnuts in their dark brown husks, and, as a thoughtful accessory, lots of rolls of toilet paper.

In the same vicinity, Hong Kong has sprouted its own SoHo ("south of Hollywood" in this case) around the Mid-Levels Escalator, which carries residents between the Central District and the homes and apartments on the slopes of Victoria Peak. The trendy area abounds with international restaurants and watering holes with names such as El Taco Loco, Nepal, Pepperoni's, p.h.u.ket Thai, Archie B's New York Deli, and the Rendezvous French Cafe and Creperie.

Our taste buds yearn instead for dim sum. Interrupting our walk temporarily for lunch, we hop a taxi to the Wan Chai neighborhood, no longer the raunchy nightlife quarter of Suzie Wong and Vietnam War R&R. Two of our favorite food authorities, Nina Simonds and R. W. Apple, Jr., have both raved in print about Victoria Seafood in the Citic Tower, where the dim sum is made to order rather than prepared in batches to be carted around for diners to select. While this method is preferable for flavor, it taxes us more in this case because we come up short again on English-language help from the menu and staff. As a Chinese cooking expert, Simonds wouldn't have needed any a.s.sistance, and Apple arrived, most likely, announced as a writer for the New York Times New York Times. Our entrance, in contrast, suggests we're clueless tourists gone astray, because the restaurant isn't on the way to anywhere except perhaps a diving expedition in the nearby harbor.

The problem is compounded by the empty tables nearby, preventing us from falling back on the often reliable technique of pointing to indicate "I'll have what she's got." In spite of the constraints, lunch turns out great, lacking only in our imagination of other treats available to the cognoscenti. Hairy crab dumplings top the lineup. The waiter brings the plump, juicy little purses in a steamer but then spoons them into small bowls to eat with a vinegar-soy dipping sauce. Two types of shrimp dumplings follow, one with a chubby pink shrimp glistening visibly through the sheer, pleated wrapper, and the other with tiny shrimp, greens, and Chinese chives in rice-paper rolls. The baked barbecued pork dumplings, next on the card, completely outshine the more common steamed pork buns offered on dim sum carts the world over. "This has to be lard pastry," Cheryl says about the flaky crust holding the scrumptious meat. Sweet egg-custard tarts, just a single, ethereal bite each, provide a divine finish with a pot of jasmine tea.

"Good thing the cooks knew more about what we wanted than we did," Bill says.

Unlike City Chiu Chow last night and the dim sum spot at lunch, our dinner restaurant, Hutong, deals with English-speaking tourists regularly. A strikingly handsome s.p.a.ce, it gleams in the dim light from sleek ebony furniture, old Chinese objects displayed as contemporary art, and celadon-glazed porcelain tableware. Many people probably come for the view, similar to ours at the Y except a couple of blocks more distant and twice as many stories high. "From here," Cheryl says, "the boats on the harbor look like bathtub toys."

The food, on the other hand, is huge in flavor. Cheryl orders radish-wrapped crab rolls for an appetizer, which the kitchen prepares by cutting a daikonlike white radish lengthwise into paper-thin strips and wrapping them around Alaskan crabmeat and black sesame seeds-an elegant idea with a tasty result, as is Bill's salad of raw scallops sliced finely and topped with pomelo, a grapefruit relative, pulled into its tiny individual sacs, a delicate combination served with a robust house-made chile paste.

The main-course presentations practically knock us off our ebony chairs. The waiter delivers our crispy lamb ribs on a section of banana leaf over a long wooden plank. The cooks have boned out each rib individually and rea.s.sembled them side by side like a rack. Every bite mingles the crusty surface meat with melting fat and succulent rare lamb, enhanced beautifully with a sweet soy sauce. If that has us leaning back in our seats in appreciation, the fried baby soft-sh.e.l.l crabs kick the legs out from under us. They show up perched dramatically atop at least one hundred stir-fried dried red Szechuan chiles (the "looking toward heaven" variety) in a round, dark bamboo container an arm's length in diameter. Neither of us can remember at first how to close our gaping mouths, but the reflex comes back with the initial taste of the luscious morsels coated in rice flour and ground red chile. On the side we get another stellar version of long beans, this time cut in two-inch pieces and stir-fried with garlic, ginger, bits of fresh red chile, minced pork, and dried shrimp.

"I can't imagine we'll have a finer or more artfully staged feast in China," Cheryl says sensibly but ultimately in error.

Our flight to mainland China the next morning concerns us a little, for reasons of check-in rigmarole rather than safety. Everything goes quickly and professionally, though, on China Southern Airlines, leaving us plenty of time for breakfast in a fast-food court. Hoping for dim sum, we discover an irresistible anomaly and wind up with Louisiana red beans and rice, southern fried chicken, and biscuits at a Popeye's, a chain based in New Orleans. Not bad at all for airport fare this far from the roots.

On the way to the gate for our nonstop hop to Shantou, the airport city closest to Chaozhou, we wander through the mall-like shopping arcade, heavy on international designer names with cookie-cutter purses and perfumes. There's even a Ferrari exhibition with a doll-size replica of a red Testarossa, where Flat Stanley poses as the driver for a photo op. When we're finally seated in the departure lounge, Cheryl looks around at the surrounding group of Chinese pa.s.sengers. "No one else is wearing these goofy tags they gave us at the check-in desk," a round stick-on label for our shirts with the airline logo and flight number. "I guess in their eyes we're like unaccompanied minors, at risk of getting lost."

"Probably so," Bill says. "They don't realize we've put Stanley at the wheel."

Where else in the world would a city of three million people not qualify for an airport of its own? And, for that matter, remain unknown to most of humankind? In China, numerous other cities simply outrank Chaozhou in population, political clout, industrial strength, and international contacts and recognition. That's basically why the local Communist Party wants us to go on TV.

Bill's college friend, John Oliver; his wife, Patty; and a ramrod straight Chinese gentleman with a seriously squared-off flattop meet us at the Shantou airport, an efficient if plain facility. John introduces their companion as Ziggy, explaining that it's their nickname for him based on the local Chinese dialect word for "driver," a respected t.i.tle in Chaozhou. "Ziggy won't say much, but he knows English moderately well. He learned it during a long stint in the PLA"-Chinese People's Liberation Army-"in circ.u.mstances he doesn't discuss with us. The car is ours, but we don't dare drive it ourselves, because if one of us got in an accident, all the blame would be put on us and the penalties would be harsh."

A modern divided highway runs between the airport and Chaozhou, about forty minutes away when traffic flows smoothly. Cars, trucks, and motorbikes crowd the road these days-a development, Patty says, of the last decade. "There used to be protected lanes for bikes and motor scooters, but with the rapid expansion in the number of cars, they got taken over for parking s.p.a.ces." Driving is something of a free-for-all, but no crazier than in Rome. Ziggy handles the job confidently and often aggressively, sometimes more so than the Olivers prefer.

Within an hour, he reaches the historic center of the city and turns down a narrow alley, barely one car wide, to get to John and Patty's residence and princ.i.p.al offices for their Calabash pottery business. They own multiple units in a seven-story building formerly occupied by the Chaozhou Chamber of Commerce. The Olivers take us first to their home, two apartments combined into one s.p.a.cious and comfortable abode, and then call their marketing office downstairs to ask a couple of their key employees to come meet us. Two young women, both initially shy, show up shortly. "This is Simin," John says, nodding toward a perky lady in her early twenties, "and the one with the big smile is Vicky," who is a decade or more older. "Remember the e-mail I sent you about doing a little interview for our local TV station about your cookbooks and your visit to Chaozhou? That was Vicky's idea, and she is acting as a liaison on it. Is it still okay with you?"

"Sure," Cheryl says, "we do short TV spots all the time in the States."

"It'll be fun to see the setup here," Bill adds.

"What's the status of that now?" Patty asks Vicky.

"The producer is still trying to figure out exactly what he wants to do and when. I'll phone him again this afternoon."

When she and Simin return to their jobs, John tells us, "We helped to teach them English, and both of them handle it pretty well now. Vicky has a connection at our single TV station, operated under the auspices of the Communist Party, because she works part-time for the Chamber of Commerce, also tied into the Party power structure."

"Let me show you our kitchen," Patty says, "and then we'll take you up to the guest apartment." She has good reason to be proud of the light-filled s.p.a.ce, probably one of the largest and most modern kitchens in the city. The Olivers enjoy cooking themselves but also have a cook, "Aunty Jane," who takes care of much of the marketing and meal preparation.

"Notice," John says, "we don't have an oven, because no one uses them in China. We do have a rice cooker, of course, like everyone else, and a dish sanitizer, because the water doesn't get hot enough to kill all bacteria."

Patty walks over to a small refrigerator. "This is our most unusual appliance. It doesn't hold much by American standards, but the whole idea of storing food at home is new here. Typically, families buy just what they'll eat at one meal."

"Let's head upstairs," John suggests. "This building, like many others, is seven stories because higher structures must have elevators. You're staying on the top floor so you won't need to worry about extra exercise." The Olivers bought the two-bedroom apartment several years ago in part for guest use and also for the access it provides to a large rooftop terrace. Patty decorated the flat in an attractively simple Chinese style and has placed orchids in the living room and fragrant tuberose in the thankfully air-conditioned bedroom. Water for showers, as John demonstrates for us, is heated on demand by igniting a gas burner before turning on the faucet. The windows on one side overlook a sprawling old family compound, once widespread in the neighborhood, where several generations lived in different quarters but shared a single kitchen and bathroom. A few centuries of weather have faded the terra-cotta roof tiles almost white.

"Farther out," John says, "you can see a slice of the mighty Han River and a part of the walls that encircled the ancient city, which dates back to the first century BC. It's been officially designated a 'Famous and Historic Cultural City.' We get lots of Chinese tourists, but few visitors from other countries."

"Chaozhou has long been known for porcelain and other ceramics," Patty adds, "because the area is full of good kaolin clay. That's why we built the factory here for our Calabash pottery. Would you like to visit the plant this afternoon?"

"Let us freshen up," Cheryl replies, "and we'll be ready to roll."

Ziggy drives the four of us, and Simin follows on her motor scooter to act as an interpreter. As soon as we arrive, Ziggy jumps into a routine that becomes common over the next few days, immediately brewing and serving Iron Buddha tea to the group as a ceremonial welcoming gesture. Calabash makes mostly landscaping ceramics, both slip-cast and jiggered pieces. Many of them are flower and plant pots of various sizes and styles, glazed and unglazed, designed to specification for American clients such as Lowe's and Kmart's Martha Stewart Enterprises line. In showing us some examples, John says, "Martha's buyers ordered these for the next season. No photos, sketches, or descriptions of any kind are allowed until they reach stores in the spring of 2006."

Parts of the production process are automated, but much of the tooling is still done by hand, often by couples working together, with the man handling the heavier labor and the wife doing the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. Lacking piped natural gas, the Olivers truck in huge tanks of propane to fuel their two kilns, one configured for specialized situations and the other a large, fully mechanized device that moves pottery through different temperatures over a nine-hour period.

"Many Chaozhou factories," Patty tells us, "house migrant workers in dormitories at the plant, but that violates good labor practices so we don't do it. We do feed our employees, however. I'll show you the kitchen." As immaculate as the rest of the operation, it features industrial-dimension woks, about three feet in diameter, and a rice cooker the size of a bathroom Jacuzzi. The company chefs, who prepare two meals a day for eighty people, are currently stir-frying chicken with loads of garlic and red chile over leaping flames.

"That looks tasty," Bill said.

"Want to come back for lunch on Monday?" John asks.

"It's a date," Cheryl answers, unaware yet that all of us will be eating elsewhere.

"Speaking of food, let's go see a Chinese version of a megastore," Patty says. "When Wal-Mart started opening outlets in China several years ago, they inspired local clones, like our Fu-Mart." She decides to ride with Simin on the back of the motor scooter, against John's objections, and the rest of us pile into the car with Ziggy.

On the way there, John tells us, "Locals dismissed this place at first because they're used to shopping on a day-to-day basis in small quant.i.ties. Then they came in on particularly hot days to take advantage of the air-conditioning, still rare in the city. They liked the constant music the store plays and also the discounted specials. Now it's busy all the time."

Several stories high, Fu-Mart stocks a range of goods, from auto parts to mattresses, but the grocery section is enormous. Patty guides us up a moving ramp walkway connecting floors, lined on both sides with bins bulging with bags of potato chips for impulse buying. Upstairs, a wall of packaged teas extends at least seventy-five feet and large baskets nearby hold twenty-five varieties of loose floral and herbal tea leaves. Banks of tanks display live fish and seafood, and rows of tables parade fresh produce of all kinds, including shiitake mushrooms for forty cents a pound and porcinis for even less. An aisle of soy sauces offers the various kinds in gas-can-size containers, and the shelves of MSG boast a h.o.a.rd of the seasoning sufficient to supply every Chinese buffet restaurant in the United States for a year. In-store bakers make Western breads and pastries, previously rare in Chaozhou; Simin admits to liking some of the cookies, but even the baguettes and doughnuts look decent. The wine department carries both Chinese and French selections, the latter in locked cases. Prepared take-home food ranges from chicken feet to whole medicinal chickens (cooked with healing herbs) and dim sum to potsticker dumplings. Some things entice us more than others, but we definitely leave with an appet.i.te.

In the store, Cheryl mentions to Patty and Simin that we looked without luck all over Hong Kong for someone to burn our trip photos onto a CD. Simin says, "Oh, I can do that. It will just take a few minutes before we go to dinner." The pictures intrigue her when she loads them into her computer and she requests permission to make copies for herself, too, so she can dream about traveling someday to all the places we have visited. "Who is the little guy in these shots?" she asks about Flat Stanley. Cheryl introduces the two and they become instant friends, posing together-and with the rest of the Calabash office staff-for their own photos.

The Olivers have planned dinner at an upscale establishment they call "the Door Man's Restaurant," a nickname derived from the owner's skill in making handsome carved doors. "It's right on Chaozhou's version of Tiananmen Square, built as a new city center for government offices just five years ago," John says. "Since then, the whole town has shifted in that direction. The old center, where we live, will be historically restored and made into a pedestrian-only zone."

Simin's parents-introduced to us only as Mr. and Mrs. Wu-join our entourage at the restaurant. When John and Patty first moved to Chaozhou, they rented rooms in the Wus' home, where they began teaching Simin English when she was just twelve. Mr. Wu is a highly regarded sculptor, currently working on a piece commissioned by a Chinese peace organization to present to President George W. Bush on an upcoming visit.

The Wus and the Olivers order for the table, just discussing the possibilities with the waiter rather than studying a menu. In halting English, Mr. Wu says, "The Chinese always try to get balance in a meal between the yin and yang, so we talk it through."

Patty mentions that Chinese restaurants dominate the dining scene. "So far, there are no Western places at all. Occasionally, you see a menu offering a 'Western dinner,' usually something odd like Salisbury steak over spaghetti."

The dishes tonight, roughly in order of service, include a warm soup; steamed vegetable dumplings; turnip cake similar to the carrot cake we had in Singapore; oyster omelet; stir-fried leafy greens; stewed sweet potatoes; and tender strips of beef with green and red bell pepper, tofu, and shiitake mushrooms. Dessert combines crisp apple slices and tiny tomatoes. John complains that the kitchen is off-key this evening and the Wus agree. Mr. Wu comments he can tell from the texture that the dumplings were refrigerated before cooking, clear evidence of a deficiency in freshness. When Cheryl compliments the turnip cake, Mrs. Wu says, "You will like mine better. I'll send some over to you with Simin." No one objects to the price: U.S.$20 total for eight people with tea and Chinese wine.

After dinner, we walk over to the huge square across the street, where hundreds of people are watching the Sat.u.r.day-night entertainment. A group from the Chaozhou opera company performs in one corner, and in another, fountains on a pond splash towering columns of water skyward, forming a screen for projected scenes from the movie Finding Nemo Finding Nemo. Neon lights outline the mid-rise buildings surrounding the square and some feature additional neon images, one an elaborate rendition of a paG.o.da and bird. Grinning children and teenagers rush up to practice their English on us, repeating after one another "h.e.l.lo," "Welcome to China," and "Good-bye." A number of them and their families gather around Cheryl for photos with a blue-eyed blonde, like she's from Mars or maybe even Hollywood.

On the way back, Ziggy drives us through a night market jammed with stalls specializing in clothes, and then down another lane lined with new upscale boutiques that John and Patty have dubbed "Hong Kong Street." Near their home, John points out the Friendship Store. "When we moved here, that run-down place was the only department store the Party would authorize in town. Now there are modern, 'bourgeois' shops everywhere." Ziggy has to stop twice in the alley leading to the Olivers' apartment building to get other residents to move their motor scooters so he can get by. Old and new, traditional and trendy, Communist and entrepreneurial, Chaozhou flaunts it all at once.

Vicky calls John on Sunday morning about TV taping plans. "The producer would like to take Cheryl and Bill, with the two of you, me, and a video crew, on a one- or two-hour tour this afternoon of historic Chaozhou, where they will film the Jamisons' reactions. He wants to know if they would be willing to sample street food from some of the most popular stands." John frowns at the last part, but poses the question to Bill while Vicky holds.