Tea

Back down in the city, it was lunchtime and we were growing hungry. We had set our hearts on dim sum and had the name and address of the oldest teahouse in town. Anyone who knows me even slightly will know that tea is a bit of an obsession of mine. In fact, on our travels, I go to great lengths to secure a decent cup of tea. This is very difficult in some places, but in Hong Kong, there are people drinking tea everywhere. Hong Kongers are even more enthusiastic about their tea than The Mynards. Dim sum is usually bits of steamed meat in a case and is not what springs to mind automatically as an accompaniment to tea. I’d go for a biscuit personally, but this is what they do in Hong Kong. Lin Heung tea house is a busy noisy place and we didn’t have a clue of the etiquette. The cashier told us to sit anywhere and we joined a glass table where two women were drinking tea. They smiled and motioned to the waiter to clear the detritus left by the people who had recently vacated the seats – tea slops and bits of bones all over the place. This is normal. There was no menu, but we were brought tea, cups, bowls, chopsticks and a pot of boiling water. What was that for? One of the ladies explained that the pot of water was for washing everything. She got to work washing our tableware. The other lady talked us through the different teas on the table. We had been brought the standard jasmine tea in a teapot. We were starving and wondered how we could get some food. Our faces must have looked both hungry and bewildered so once again, people helped us out. I had been warned that people here were among the rudest on Earth, but in restaurants and teahouses we found nothing but patience and kindness. An old lady pushing a metal trolley full of bamboo baskets bustled past. The ladies at our table talked to her and then sent her away “you won’t like that”. They obviously don’t know David. “What was it?”, “pig stomach”. I probably would have eaten it if I hadn’t known what it was. David actually looked disappointed that we weren’t having them. What else was out there? Another trolley rattled past. More bamboo steamers, this time full of fluffy white buns. We decided that we would get them no matter what was in them: we were starving. “Like Chinese hot dogs” one of the women told us laughing. We have had the buns before in Vietnam and Yokohama, but never with a gristly, spicy sausage inside! The two ladies had finished their lunch so we said goodbye. We were quickly joined by two men – office workers from nearby companies. They helped us to order pork dim sum. I took a bite too late to worry about what to do with the bone and gristle. There were no napkins to discretely put anything into. There is nothing discrete about eating in a Hong Kong teahouse: people just spit their bones onto the table so I joined in. Finally, there were lotus flower buns: these went really well with jasmine tea I thought. One of the guys at the table (Anthony Lam – we have his card) talked us through the bill. Each time we order something, the server stamps our card. At the end we are left with an assortment of numbers in different columns so that our bill can be calculated. The cashiers know a number 4 in column 3, row 8 means that we had a steamer full of pork and bones. The meal came to about a fiver.