china town

✻ china town is such a cool place to hang out, in every city of the world.

on our day off yesterday jerry and i went out for dinner at a korean restaurant in china town with a window menu advertising delicious looking hot-pots and fried dumplings.
the waiter was fresh off the boat and i think it was his first job in a restaurant because the poor thing was terrified. although i ordered a 'vegetarian babimbop' directly from the menu, which the waiter double checked, of course it arrived (after jerry had already been served and finished his meal), with minced meat in it....

after our meals we went for a wander through china town, and feeling piggish, we decided to sample some pork buns (jerry) and red bean buns (me) from a popular little street stall. biting into the thick soft dough reminded me off my childhood - on the way home from every trip to melbourne, dad would detour past china town just to stock up on the bean buns...
mum would also drag me along on 'business trips' to china town to buy her 'secret black ink' that was apparently the best for her calligraphy and only available in one particular little junk shop in china town. i felt very special being the only one who knew where she sourced it from and sworn to secrecy regarding it.

after i'd moved to melbourne for uni, mum and dad went through their feng shui phase, and i was sent with an extensive list and a hundred dollars to china town where i was instructed to buy various things including a jade frog with a coin in its mouth, a hexagonal chinese mirror, a brass bell and a picture of two geese, which they desperately needed to fix the flow of energy through their house.

next time i visited home their tv was in a new corner, the toilet was lit with a red light (which was so dark you could barely find your way to the toilet seat) and there was an empty ceramic vase on the floor which i was later reprimanded for putting a used toilet roll in, since its purpose was for draining negative energy from the whole house.
(im not pissing on mum and dad, i actually do believe in feng shui...)

jerry and i stood in china town eating sesame icecream and people-watching for ages; the little old chinese migrants picking up their chinese newspapers and playing mahjong under the chinese gazebo. china town really is a wonderful cultural experience.