To be in Sydney is to be in a foreign country if you had just arrived from Melbourne! I landed in Sydney a day before Chinese New Year a few years ago! The sun was blinding and the air was thick with promises of a hot summer night on its way! Staying in Sydney’s Chinatown is a wondrous feeling – fire crackers, smells of roast ducks and char siew, beautiful Chinese girls exposing midriffs and a sliver of swaying hip and awesome Chunks (read Chinese hunks) – it must be a foreign country, Can’t be Australia, not even, Little Burke Street in Melbourne. Sydney! Sydney! Continue reading “Sydney! Sydney! Oh, What A Chinese Feeling!”
Tapas, Yum Cha, Siestas and Senoritas…
Hola amigos, amicas or ni hao xiao peng yu. Spanish is as far away as I can get from being Chinese, culturally speaking that is. Yet ironical as it may seem, we got off the plane in Barcelona, into a bus and before we knew it, we were in the city centre in the midst of shops sprouting Chinese names such as Du Hua, Tian Tian, Xing Xing and it was a total surprise. Where have all the Chinese gone? I was tempted to sing a la the old Marlene Dietrich. Barcelona, of course, where else? So many Chinese but no yum cha. So off we went for the tapas instead. Continue reading “Tapas, Yum Cha, Siestas and Senoritas…”
What Animal are you in Bed?
Sometimes when there is a lull in a conversation and I am bored sitting for hours at a Chinese banquet of endless courses, I like to ask the person sitting next to me: “What animal are you?”. I get a repertoire of stock responses : Huh?? *#* What do you mean? Animals as in Noah’s ark? Animals in the zoo? Two legged kind? I have come to expect these responses even before the person opens his mouth so recently I got a laugh when I asked a man the same question at a Chinese New Year dinner. He replied: “Where? In bed?”. Continue reading “What Animal are you in Bed?”