Stars and sand

It was one Friday night where I was seriously looking forward to going home and crawling into bed with a book. I’d just finished a six-day week, and I’d gone straight to the office from the airport after a very fun, very exhausting three-day weekend. (More on that trip soon; I’m still toning photos.) Then a coworker announces that she’s heading to Shek O to meet friends and eat Thai food. Did any of us want to join?

I decided to go, and I’m so glad I did. Minus the long cab ride over dark, deserted, winding roads, it was far more relaxing than lying in bed with a book.

After a late meal of great Thai food, the five of us migrated to a bar by the beach. It was the perfect place for sitting outside, nursing a beer and talking. It’s the first place I’ve been in Hong Kong where I can really smell the ocean. (Well, I can smell it in TST, too, but it doesn’t smell like that. In Shek O, it smells like it’s supposed to!)

It was easy to forget we were in Hong Kong. It really felt like we were on an island in the Caribbean somewhere – as far as one could possibly get from skyscrapers and bright lights and noise and crowds.

I think I could even see stars.

The great milk incident

Feeling the need for a latté (as I do once in a while), I wandered into a well-known coffee chain earlier this week.

A question pops into my head before I order. I ask the boy working the counter: “Where does your milk come from?”

He pulls a carton from the fridge and shows it to me. It’s an Australian brand, he says, and it comes from Indonesia. I ask how long they’ve been using it.

“Oh, six months. More than six months.” He lowers his voice. “Since long before the incident.”

“The incident,” of course, is the ever-widening scandal of tainted milk. At least four children have died; tens of thousands more have severe kidney problems. (It’s not limited to humans, either: Baby animals in a Shanghai zoo have kidney stones, too, after being fed with milk powder for more than a year.) Chinese dairy products have been pulled from store shelves here in Hong Kong. Melamine-tainted products have turned up in an increasing number of Chinese-made exports —yogurt, ice cream, candy, rice balls, koala-shaped cookies, potato-wasabi crackers.

There have been many, many food scares in China over the years. And, even though the government is promising better regulation, I’m sure this won’t be the last one. I’ve always been a bit wary of food from Mainland China, and it’s easy to avoid here. Though most of the food is imported, not all of it comes from China. Even the produce vendors in the street sell California strawberries and Florida oranges and French zucchini.

But very soon, I’m going to the Mainland for two weeks. As much as I’m looking forward to – even excited about -- the food there, I’m worried, too.

It’s easy to avoid thinking about milk laced with plastic and cookies tainted with lead, but it’s harder to push aside thoughts of and vegetables grown in polluted earth, fish from toxic waters, and pork pumped full of steroids. It’s enough to make one lose one’s appetite.

At least I don't have to worry about my occasional lattés.

Chinese lessons

Sometimes I think I should have stuck with Cantonese class at the office.

Yesterday, for instance. Running late for work, I flag down a cab. (I do this regularly, even though I try to take the bus as often as I can.) I told the driver where I wanted to go, in Cantonese.

I was not trying to be funny -- it's a basic address, after all -- but whatever I said made the guy double over with laughter. I think he was wiping tears away from his eyes as he set the meter and drove away from the curb. I'm sure he's at home now, telling his wife, "You aren't going to believe what this gweilo chick said to me today!"

It took me more than a week to feel brave enough to say my destination in Cantonese. In the relative privacy of my apartment, I've been saying the address out loud over and over while I do housework. I'm not sure it's working.

Usually, my exchanges with cab drivers go as follows: I get in a cab and tell the driver my address in Cantonese; a puzzled look comes over his face. I say it again. He sits there. Finally, I pull out the card with my address on it, if I have one. "Ooooh!" he says, finally understanding. He says it like he's trying to correct me for next time. It sounds exactly like what I just said. Then I hang on for dear life as the driver shoots away from the curb.

It's among the most frustrating things about living here. (I'll relate the two most frustrating things in a later post.) It's not that I'm bad with languages. I try to learn at least a few words of the language to the place I'm traveling. I speak French and had no trouble picking up Spanish and bits of Portuguese. I can say basic things like "hello" and "thank you" and "where is the bathroom" in German, Czech, Italian and Japanese. But none of those languages are tonal. Cantonese has six tones.

I have learned a few things. I know the two types of "thank you" and "hello" and "good bye." If I get stuck at a restaurant with only Chinese menus, I can order one thing: "Sichuan noodles." (The only three characters I recognize.)

But spoken Cantonese? It's eluding me.

At least I'm entertaining the occasional cab driver.