The Dim Sum of All Things

by Kim Wong Keltner

  The Dim Sum of All Things

  Kim Wong Keltner

  Contents

  The Dim Sum of All Things

  She Was a Freak Magnet

  Little Miss Owyang Falls in Like

  Bananas, Twinkies, and Eggs

  Mooncakes at the White House

  Chinese + English = Chinglish

  Now Back to the Michael We Really Care About

  Your Goose is Cooked, Duck

  Simmering Below the Surface…

  She Married a Cracker and Lived to Tell About It

  A Tale of Two Steves

  Not Unlike Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur I’Herbe

  A Fortnight in the Life of Our Favorite Receptionist

  Pau Pau Checks Her Look in the Mirror, Just Like Bruce Springsteen

  Chinese Water Torture

  Interview with the Hoarder

  Honor Roll, Not Egg Roll

  A Preference for White Meat

  Round-Eye Round Up

  Egg Fool Young

  Party Like a Rock Star

  Not a Chinaman’s Chance

  Chinese Chick & Salad

  They Eat Horses, Don’t They?

  Chipping Off the Urban Decay

  Black Cubes of Grass Felly

  The Chinese Must Go

  One Thousand Saturdays

  Let Us Now Praise Chinese Grannies

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The Dim Sum of All Things

  Many strange tales have been told about sassy receptionists and their antics in the urban wild, but none so strange as the story of Miss Lindsey Owyang, a Chinese-American wage-slave who turned twenty-five last summer.

  Lindsey was a fairly clever receptionist, but she was more than just a worker bee who had mastered the intricacies of voice mail and fax dialing. She was a third-generation San Franciscan of Chinese descent who could not quote a single Han Dynasty proverb, but she could recite entire dialogues from numerous Brady Bunch episodes. She knew nothing of Confucius and did not speak any Cantonese or Mandarin, but she had spent years studying the Western Canon and had learned to conjugate irregular French verbs. All that reading of European literature did her a heap of good now. When she graduated from college, prospective employers didn’t care about her mastery of iambic pentameter; they just wanted her to answer the telephone and type with robotic efficiency.

  She considered herself lucky to have landed her job at Vegan Warrior magazine. The publication was a style resource for the vegetarian community, and most articles featured organic food, hemp fashions, astrology, and eco-travel. In their mission statement, the editors bragged of their firm commitment to equality and social justice, but their philosophy didn’t prevent them from summoning Lindsey to perform all their menial tasks. Each morning, she mopped spilled rice milk from the kitchen floor, and in the afternoons she was dispatched to retrieve soy lattes.

  She and a few other closet meat-eaters had infiltrated the staff of smug Limoges-liberals who drank cruelty-free decaf. As the majority of employees stomped through the office in Birkenstocks and Chi Pants, Lindsey was an outcast because she wore makeup and owned one vintage sweater with a modest rabbit fur collar. Coworkers regarded her with suspicion, but she was happy enough to keep to herself.

  When the phones weren’t busy, she deionized the drinking water and scoured the tofu cheese from the inside of the microwave. While performing her various housekeeping duties she had time to ruminate on the philosophies of the various dead white men she had studied in college. However, as a modern Chinese-American woman, her worldview was quite different from theirs.

  One day, as she unclogged a bloated gardenburger from the sink drain, she was pondering the existence of certain white males who were obsessed with Asian women. She called these men the Hoarders of All Things Asian, or just Hoarders, for short. These shy, Caucasian beta-males, with dirty blond hair and sallow complexions, moseyed through the world, blending effortlessly into the general population. But Lindsey had learned to spot them. Over the past few months she had been noticing that she attracted numerous stares from these nerdy white guys wearing tan jeans and vanilla-hued cardigans, and she deduced that their clothes were meant as some kind of urban camouflage. Their gray pallor, mixed with beige wardrobes, combined to create an overall “greige” appearance. And when they tried to pick up on her, saying garbled things like “Konichiwa, Chinese princess,” she assumed they had bland, taupe personalities to match.

  She had a theory that these neat’n’tidy nerds were disguised as “good guys” but were actually stealthy predators who feigned interest in Asian cuisine, history, and customs in hopes of attracting an exotic porcelain doll like those portrayed so fetchingly in pop culture movies and advertisements. These Hoarders of All Things Asian sought the erotic, hassle-free companionship they believed to be the specialty of lily-footed celestials, geishas, fan-tan dancers, and singsong girlies. They were unable to distinguish these fantasy ideals from modern women, and, like fishermen in sampans, tended to cast their nets toward any vaguely Asian-looking female, expecting to be lavished with the mysterious, untold delights of the Orient.

  These creepy men frequently approached Lindsey at coffeehouses, on park benches, and in bookstores. She sometimes spotted one cruising Clement Street, or dining alone in a Chinese restaurant, or clinging to a ticket stub from the Pacific Rim film festival with clammy, froglike fingers. They trawled the land in search of Asian flesh, and she was sickened by the idea of being targeted as some kind of exotic sex toy.

  She felt like she had discovered a new comet, and she monitored the night sky for potential dating dangers. She was convinced that, if Dante had been Chinese, he would have designated a specific circle of hell for the worst of these loathsome trolls. She liked to think of these fetishists cast into the Underworld, confined in a criblike pen where they could not escape to molest her. She wanted them corralled into a muddy pit, where they would remain, wallowing in miserable, Woodstock-like conditions for all eternity.

  Although Lindsey was admittedly attracted to white boys, she shrewdly eliminated romantic candidates who exhibited any Hoarder tendencies. She hated the idea of some pervert zoning in on her because of her black hair, almond-shaped eyes, or any of the submissive, back-scrubbing fantasies her physical features might suggest to a large, clumsy mammal in tube socks.

  Her wariness stemmed from the fact that she had convinced herself that her Chinese heritage was not one of the main components of her identity but was simply a superfluous detail. As far as she was concerned, her Chinese-ness was not the first thing someone should notice about her.

  Walking home from work one day, she stopped at the video store to browse. As she perused the biography section with tapes about Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf, her mind drifted. She had always had romantic notions about becoming a famous author, but she often wondered if writers all had big fat butts and sat around in sweatpants all day. They all died depressed, crazy, and poverty-stricken. And that certainly wasn’t what she wanted. Also, the writers who called her office were always so irritable and condescending, as if they ruled the world from stylish and lofty “home offices.” She figured they were just sitting in studio apartments, wearing coffee-stained pajamas and smelling of buttered toast.

  Her daydreaming was interrupted by a gruff voice. “What do you mean, you don’t have Hackers?”

  She instinctively crouched down behind the nearest partition. Behind a row of suntanned butts with “wild” airbrushed across the fleshy cracks, she knelt and hid. She hid because she recognized the man’s voice, and his name. When he grumbled, “I’m Miles Olin. Call me when Hackers gets returned,”
she was certain he called her office at least twice a day. He was one of the magazine’s writers, and yes, she was right about the coffee stains. Instead of pajamas, he wore a crummy brown jogging suit.

  If ever there was a name that had Hoarder written all over it, it was Miles. There was no method to her determinations, but at some point, she had included it in her mental pantheon of all-time popular Hoarder names, which also included Gordon, Dennis, Doug, Jim, Don, and finally, Steve. (The last one, she admitted, was perhaps a contender only as a fluke, seeing as how so many guys were named Steve nowadays.)

  After the writer left the store and lumbered from sight, Lindsey popped a stick of gum in her mouth and decided against getting a video.

  “That guy’s an asshole,” the clerk said as she passed the front counter.

  “Yeah,” she replied, “some people are.”

  Resuming her walk home, she passed the stationery store that sold Hello Kitty stuff. She was mortified by her secret love for Kitty, Mimmy, Chococat, and Keroppi. It was all so stereotypical, so tragically Asian of her to adore the fuzzy, mouthless, big-eyed baby animals.

  In grade school, she had once descended on this very store for a brief shoplifting pick-me-up. As her white friends loaded up their jumpers with Little Twin Star erasers, Snoopy mini colored pencils, and Hello Kitty key-chains, Lindsey walked out with a gluestick, fearing that any Sanrio product would associate her with the immigrant outcasts who snacked on Pocky sticks at recess. She never let her grandmother, Pau Pau, put anything Chinese in her Bugs Bunny lunchbox. No rice, no cha-siu baus. She felt that only sandwiches with Safeway cold cuts were acceptable lunchtime fare.

  At one point, she even told people she didn’t like Chinese food. Nope, didn’t like it at all. Would rather have pizza. Of course, it was all some kind of preteen sham. She always ate Chinese food with Pau Pau, and not just chow mein or sweet-and-sour pork. No, Pau Pau prepared the hardcore what-the-hell-is-that kind of Chinese food: organ meats and unrecognizable fish parts that had been sliced to bits with a cleaver as long as a human arm earlier that morning in Chinatown. “Fresh,” her grandmother insisted.

  For Lindsey, the description and details of real Chinese food—real Chinese anything—were too complicated to begin explaining to white people. Of course, not that anyone ever asked. Maybe they didn’t want to seem too curious or too objectifying. White guilt was like smog in the Bay Area, like filthy puffs of charcoal gray exhaust blasting out of Muni buses and impregnating the city air, hanging around the horizon like a ring of oven grease, but perhaps, at times, contributing to prettier sunsets.

  As she walked, thoughts of grammar school and her younger self still lingered in her head. She recalled how much she hated her name back then. She felt her first name made her sound like a British missionary’s neglected child dying of consumption, and her last name made her sound so, uh, Chinese. She wanted an ordinary name, and not just a plain one like Wong or Chan, although those might be a slight improvement over Owyang, which sounded so ugly in the mouth—loud and clanging, like something you’d scream after getting your finger smashed against a giant brass gong. She wanted an anonymous name, preferably one that wouldn’t declare her ethnicity so blatantly. Kids at school would pretend to trip or get hurt and they’d shout, “Ow! Yang!” Then they’d erupt in howls as they cast their pale faces her way. Kids used their index fingers to stretch their eyelids into slants and they’d sing, “Chinese, Japanese, knobby knees, look at these!” Sticking out their flat chests, they’d shimmy around the playground like seductive Suzie Wongs.

  Over the years Lindsey eventually accepted her name. Having met Chinese kids who’d been teased much more relentlessly, she realized her name could have been much worse. Beethoven Sing was ridiculed for his utter lack of musical talent, Dorcas Foo was routinely called both a dork and a fool, Ima Ho had to constantly deny being a prostitute, and poor Gina Fang never escaped her schoolyard nickname, Vagina Fangs.

  As Lindsey hiked from downtown toward Russian Hill, she passed several boutiques filled chockablock with fabulous orientalia: wide-legged pants with floriental designs, pillows made from antique kimono remnants, paper lanterns, cloisonné dishes, and jewelry made from those coins with the square in the middle. She loved the brocaded fabrics, sandalwood scents, and gorgeous junkiness of it all, but she was disturbed by the confused disregard for each culture: Mandarin jackets stacked with Japanese obi, and Ganesha postcards jumbled with Mao Tse-tung coasters. She especially hated the plastic Buddha-on-a-cellphone toys.

  She trudged up Leavenworth toward the apartment she shared with her grandmother. Her family owned the building, and her mother and aunties had all grown up in the spacious top-floor unit. As a child, Lindsey had passed most afterschool hours and some nights there, usually waiting until after dinner for her parents to pick her up and take her to their own home in the Sunset District. Living in her grandmother’s apartment now was a good arrangement. She had moved in after college graduation, which allowed her to gingerly dip her toes into adult life while keeping one foot planted in safety. She enjoyed free meals and nonexistent rent payments.

  As she crossed Hyde she barely missed getting creamed by a Ford Explorer as its driver jabbered obliviously into a cell phone. She wanted to spit her gum at the Eddie Bauer Limited Edition, but she refrained. She was very conscientious about not littering.

  Another block away, Lindsey passed the bookstore where, in a rare moment of self-motivation, she once purchased a writing how-to book that advised her to tackle whatever subject she knew best. But Lindsey didn’t think she knew anything. Not really.

  She knew about growing up in San Francisco. But books about her hometown never described the city as she knew it. She understood why people gushed poetic about the fog and the hills, but she wondered why no one ever mentioned homeless people crapping in otherwise fine parking spaces, or the authentic smells of polluted baywater and rotting garbage that wafted down Columbus Avenue. She had never gotten around to visiting any of the city’s main attractions, had only sped by them in the backseat of her parents’ car a thousand times to and from school. She had ridden a cable car only once, back in the second grade when it had cost a nickel and she’d had to board while holding her grandmother’s hand.

  Oh, she also knew about living with Pau Pau. But neither San Francisco nor her granny seemed like exciting topics to write about. And, besides, becoming a working writer wasn’t a real-life possibility. She just kept the idea swirling inside her dreamy head, along with notions like becoming a famous Abstract Expressionist painter, winning the California lottery, or finding True Love.

  Lindsey bounded up the stairs to the third-floor apartment and kicked off her Kenneth Coles. Flopping onto her bed, she put her head down for a moment. She sensed that her grandmother wasn’t home, because the odor of tiger balm wasn’t overpowering, just simply there.

  Unzipping her jeans, she exhaled a sigh of sudden sexual frustration. Sadly, the screwing of boys was not something that was going to happen in her grandmother’s apartment. Aside from the boner-wilting old lady stuff—the sexy dentures stewing in the bathroom cup, the medicinal un-aromatherapy of arthritis plasters, the eye-watering fumes of tiger balm caressing the air—any form of dating white boys was just not mentioned in this household. Perhaps someday a well-mannered boy, fresh off the boat from China, would bring over a roasted pig and a bag of money in exchange for the simple honor of asking her to the movies. But she was well aware that no hottie would be unlocking the chink in her chastity belt anytime soon. Even if she got Pau Pau out of the house, there would be no way to respectfully get it on with a white devil on the same mattress where her grandpa, Gung Gung, had died. Especially not under the all-seeing portrait of him shaking hands with Jimmy Carter. Wasn’t gonna happen.

  Pau Pau was still in Chinatown playing mahjong. Every day, even on the weekends, she scrambled her 110-pound, 4-foot, 10-inch self onto the bus, and rode nine blocks down Clay Street to a quiet alley where she happily g
ambled away the hours. If she was on a winning streak, she might not come home for dinner.

  Lindsey zipped up her pants, deciding that a stroll down to the mahjong parlor would be good for some fresh air. She gathered up her keys and a sweater, and quickly fluffed her bangs and teased her straight, shoulder-length hair in the mirror. As was her habit, she pinched the half-inch of extra weight at her waist and surveyed her 5-foot, 2-inch frame for any newfound blubber. Content enough with her appearance, she ran down the stairs with a sudden burst of energy.

  The air on the shaded sidewalk smelled faintly of honeysuckle as she walked up and over Clay Street. The light of the afternoon dimmed, and she entered a narrow alley, which was quiet except for the sound of elderly residents meandering by or tending to the potted plants on their balconies. She heard tinkling Chinese music playing from a window overhead, and as she walked, she wondered if this alley looked the same a hundred years ago, when it was the site of gang wars over slave girls.

  Approaching the door of the mahjong parlor, she half-imagined she’d need a secret knock or password. Maybe a peephole or rectangular slit would open to reveal the bloodshot eyeball of a wary guard. She listened for the sound of a whirring, rushing waterfall created by the swirling motion of a thousand clicking mahjong tiles under golden hands. Hearing only silence, she rang the bell.

  A Chinese man in a ribbed undershirt and slippers answered the door. He spoke to her in Cantonese and she panicked. Eight years of skipping afternoons at St. Mary’s Chinese School had left her with only a limited Cantonese vocabulary of obscenities, racial slurs, and food names. She dared not speak any Chinese for fear of accidentally saying, “Piss your mother’s fried noodles up the ass.”