Wide World of Steam (Noodle Shop, Sheung Shui 上水)

In their perspex hutch cooks rustle up
a galaxy of dumplings and noodles.
A waitress in gumboots
gives me the stern-eye test — she softens
when I stammer out my order comprehensibly
(Sai leih 犀利, she mutters to her customer-
theatre). There’s a great big board up there on the wall
in place of a menu, badly amended
with the usual afterthoughts,
and a squeeze of round stools round thin, plywood tables
which people are forced — amicably —
to share. I get my cold cup of soy-milk
and a bowl of hot broth snaked with white hoh 河 (river) noodles;
beneath them, submerged, tight knuckles of pork
and prawn-meat wantonly glisten.
It is then I sit back at my wide rim of steam
lost in sub-animal comfort.

 

Photograph: 香港屯門屯子圍 Tuen Tsz Wai, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong (2016)