While exploring the Yau Ma Tei Wholesale Fruit Market this morning over on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, I was intrigued by the fresh cherimoyas and ripe hachiya persimmons. I haggled my way into a small discount with two hachiyas. Unfortunately, I was unsure which of the cherimoyas were ripe and ready enough to eat, so I hesitated on those and ended up not buying any, which was a shame given that I cannot even remember the last time I got to enjoy that custardy, sweet fruit. Kaia said she had to go pee, and when I asked the workers where the closest restroom was since my daughter had to pee, a fruit manager took pity on us and offered their toilet in the back for her to use.

“The closest public one is too far away!” the fruit worker insisted. “She’s too young to wait!” I always love how Asian ladies dote on littles so much.

Unfortunately, their toilet was…. not particularly the cleanest one we’d ever encountered. It smelled as though it hadn’t been properly cleaned in years. There wasn’t any soap in the bathroom, so I had to use hand sanitizer on both of us. Within a few blocks, Kaia said she had to pee yet again, and so I begrudgingly took her to the public restroom right there, completely not expecting the experience we would have.

As soon as I entered, I saw a worker wiping down surfaces with sanitizing spray. Beside her was a mop, which she was using to clean the floors. The entire bathroom smelled like jasmine flowers. Each of the stalls had a clean toilet, a clean seat down with a lid, as well as ample toilet paper. Next to the toilet paper dispenser was a little motion-activated machine to allow you to use some toilet paper to spray a disinfectant spray onto the toilet seat before using. In English and Chinese on the inside of each stall, a sign explained that to ensure the highest levels of hygiene to please close the toilet lid before flushing. I was so surprised and excited to see this; the toilet lids being closed while flushing has been noted in lots of hygiene-related studies and news articles as the number one way to increase cleanliness in bathrooms and to prevent the (airborne) spread of fecal matter, which tends to be all over your bathroom whether you are aware of it or not (unfortunately, this is impossible in U.S. public restrooms, as virtually NO public toilets will have a lid. It’s actually disturbing to me how prevalent that is and how no one seems to [know to] care about it). The sinks were wiped clean of even the smallest water drops. The soap dispensers were all motion activated and filled to the brim. There was the option of a hand dryer or paper towels (much to Kaia’s excitement since she’s completely terrified of hand dryers).

I just couldn’t believe how clean this public restroom was — literally every single part of it. And there was an attendant parked there to clean every centimeter of that place. And that restroom was not the exception here — this was how every public restroom we entered was. Contrary to how I feel when using public restrooms in the U.S., I actually never dreaded using a public toilet here in Hong Kong and instead, found it quite fun to see exactly how sanitized and clean all of them were. Hong Kong’s public toilets should be a model for the rest of the world!

Later on, we chose a slightly upscale dim sum house for lunch. I was excited for the opportunity to enjoy a proper yum cha experience in Hong Kong… and was quickly confused when I was handed the (Chinese) dim sum ordering menu to check off which items I wanted and realized I couldn’t read or recognize most of the dishes listed. I know how to read pretty much every semi-common, popular dim sum dish, in both Cantonese and Mandarin. I didn’t understand why things read so differently on this menu. I started using Google Lens to help me translate some of the dishes, but frankly, it wasn’t much help. The biggest issue when reading Chinese menus, as I’ve tried to explain to Chris and multiple others who don’t read or speak any Chinese, is that a lot of food dishes in China have very idiomatic naming conventions and have no real meaning within themselves at all. The dishes are very rarely as straight forward as Western menus are with their descriptions or names. So unless you are familiar with old Chinese texts that make these historical references or “nicknames”/shortened names for foods, you will have no idea what dish you are actually looking at.

Here’s an example of language/cultural nuances from my childhood of a common dish we had on our table at restaurants, especially for the kids, also a dish I crave every now and then: gan chao niu he 干炒牛河 (beef chow fun). The characters literally say “dry fry beef river.” But if you know the language and what’s being shortened, you’ll know right away that what it’s really saying is 干炒牛河 [粉] or gan chao niu he fen –– dry fried beef with flat rice noodles (NOT saucy or with gravy is the meaning of “dry.” 河粉 Or “he fen” / “ho fun” is the name of the long, flat, wide, rice noodles. And if you don’t know the language or food, you’ll just sit there feeling puzzled, not understanding what the heck a “beef river” is.

I sat there, as Chris says, looking like I was studying for an exam while going over that freaking Chinese menu. It took me a while to make my selections. He was getting antsy with me because he was quite hungry, and he could see the dishes were clearly being made to order and were taking a while to come out to other tables. Here’s one dish we ordered which I took a chance on and ended up really enjoying, but it literally meant nothing to me other than three characters (dou miao and egg) when I ordered it: 金銀蛋浸豆苗 jin yin dan jin dou miao or literally, “gold silver egg dipped dou miao/pea shoots.” I didn’t know what all those characters meant together, but I did know that there would be dou miao/pea shoots in it, as well as egg, so I just checked it off. If you read that translated word for word, what would you think it meant? And what came to our table but a large bowl of clear soup with floating egg drop wisps, a generous pile of pea shoots, and thick slices of pi dan/century egg. It was a deeply flavorful, savory broth that we all enjoyed (and Kaia devoured), but it was confusing because I genuinely wasn’t sure how gold silver egg dipped pea shoots translated into a SOUP? I would love for someone to explain this to very Americanized/Westernized me.

So we got a bit of a hodge podge of dim sum because a lot of these things just are not typically on standard dim sum menus in Chinese yum cha houses in the U.S.: the pea shoot and century egg/egg drop soup; fried sesame balls with a light mung bean filling; chee cheong fen (HK style, no fillings other than sauce); fried silken tofu with a slightly peppery coating; shui jiao (fried glutinous rice dumplings with pork, mushrooms, and jicama; mango pudding. Chris wasn’t super satisfied, so I figured now was the time to relent and ask for the English menu. I took the English menu and compared it against the Chinese menu, and there were maybe only two or three things that had crossover; the English menu had all the standard things you’d expect, like ha gao, siu mai, nor mai fan, etc., yet NONE WERE ON THE CHINESE MENU. I was even more confused at this point (and I asked the server if we could add black bean sauce steamed spare ribs, off the English/Chinese menu, to “complete” our meal and make sure Chris didn’t feel jipped of his first Hong Kong yum cha experience this trip). This led me to believe one of two things:

1. Locals who just know will order the dishes that we in the West consider “standard dim sum” dishes off menu, so there’s nothing for them to check off on the ordering card; it’s simply understood by the server and by the kitchen that they will churn out these dishes, or
2. The restaurant doesn’t make what we consider “standard dim sum” dishes for locals and makes them only for overseas Chinese/Asians who have come to expect certain dishes to be “authentic” Chinese yum cha dishes.
3. Or, maybe a combination of 1 and 2…?!

I don’t know. This kind of felt like discrimination or gas-lighting to me!