I met a large Chinese woman who was about my age, maybe in her forties, who was tall and not pretty but she was a livewire and fun to be around in an intimidating way.
She had lived in many places.
‘I was in Tokyo for three years,’ she yelled. ‘And Hong Kong and America.’
We were in a strange part of a town with non-descript beige and white buildings that surrounded us in the forecourt where we stood. It was pouring down where we were, a deluge, but it did not seem to bother the large woman
‘If I had to guess where we are,’ I replied, ‘I’d guess we are in Hong Kong.’
But it would be a pure guess because the buildings could have been anywhere, though the rain might’ve been a clue. Then, sure enough, a double decker bus pulled away from the other side of the court and revealed a sign on one of the buildings. It was written in Chinese. And underneath, in English, in black lettering, it was written ‘Hong Kong.’
‘See! I was right!’ I exclaimed. ‘And I also lived in Hong Kong for three years.’
An Asian man in a pinstripe suit and salt and pepper hair joined us as I continued. ‘But I also lived in Paris.’
‘Oh?’ The woman replied.
‘But it was only three months,’ I added.
I did not know whether that counted as ‘living there’, but she seemed impressed with that.
‘I live in Washington now,’ I said.
‘And what about London?’ She asked.
‘No, I lived there thirty years, already. I don’t need to live there anymore.’
A cab drew up alongside us and the woman slid in next to the driver while I got in the back.
The Asian man walked away but just as the cab circled the forecourt I said, ‘Don’t we want to give the Asian man a ride too?’ The cab pulled over and the woman called out to the Asian man who got in beside me and placed his briefcase squarely on his lap.
‘We need to get some candy,’ said the woman, so the driver drove us down into the market where the streets were very narrow and where washing, put out to dry, was hung above us.
The first place we found only had round kiddie sized popsicles so the woman took two. ‘Tai chi ja nien,’ she said to the storekeeper.
‘That’s “Thank you” in Chinese,’ she said to me and I replied. ‘Tai chi ja nien, that’s easy to remember, you know why?’ I giggled. ‘Because “tai chi”.’
We stopped at another stall in a small square that had a fountain in the middle, but no water, and a shopkeeper there handed each of us a set of longer popsicles.
We sat down on the edge of the fountain. ‘But the best ones are chocolate, and I don’t see any chocolate ones here,’ complained the woman.
I looked at my popsicles and noticed that one of them was chocolate. I took a bite and underneath the surface was the yellow honeycomb of a Crunchie. It was good!
‘I got one,’ I announced, and I showed it to the large woman. She snatched it from me and stood it upright on the concrete edge of the fountain, then she licked her fingers before swiping the surface of my popsicle. The chocolate coating came off quite easily, it being already soft, but it annoyed me that she was classless enough to wipe off all my chocolate.
Photo of Maneki-neko figurines by Theodore Nguyen via Pexels.