The lesser visited parts of Manhattan Chinatown

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As I’ve gotten older, and as the pandemic decimated a lot of Chinatown businesses, my fondness, general adoration, and affinity to Chinatowns everywhere have grown. Since the pandemic, my desire to support Chinatown businesses has only grown stronger, not that it was ever weak. So much Asian hate happened in 2020-2021 because of COVID-19, and it was unfairly exerted against businesses in Chinatowns across the world. Although I’ve lived in New York since 2008 and have always had a strong familiarity with Manhattan Chinatown, I think my knowledge of it and its businesses has gotten even stronger since 2020. Manhattan Chinatown is quite a large Chinatown. If you were to delineate where Manhattan Chinatown is touristy, popular, or “clean,” I’d draw the line at where Chrystie Street is, all the way down to where the Manhattan Bridge starts, and say that everything west of that line is recognized and frequented by people who are Asian and not. The main tourist drag is most definitely Canal Street. But once you go east of Chrystie Street, that’s where things become a bit more ambiguous. That area, to me, has always felt like the “real” Manhattan Chinatown since even before I moved here. At some times of the day and night, walking through there feels just like walking around in a large city in China when you see the sea of people moving, hear all the endless Chinese dialects spoken, and feel the sheer energy.

Generally, the area both slightly to the east and west of the Manhattan Bridge feels grittier, likely because of all the endless car traffic and the trains going above. There’s this one “mall” that is right on East Broadway, just underneath the bridge, that I’d always wondered about. It looked like there were businesses inside, and I could always see people walking in and out of that building, but I never felt compelled to go in there until a popular New York City-based Asian food personality on Instagram posted that she had some delicious dumplings and steamed pork buns in its basement. The spot is called Fu Zhou Wei Zhong (or ZWZ for short). The owners are originally from Fuzhou, so the food is Fuzhou style, which I’m still getting familiar with. So I figured that since I have to go pick up Kaia from school down in Chinatown five times a week now that this is my opportunity to finally explore all these little restaurants and holes-in-the-wall that I never gave myself time to really look at (and taste!) before.

This afternoon, I entered the mall, which was dingy, poorly lit, and not well labeled (other than in Chinese). I went down to the basement, where it was pretty much completely deserted except for tthe Fu Zhou Wei Zhong food stall, which was a huge window with a bunch of random tables around it. The same printing of the menu was on several walls, in English and in Chinese. On another wall, there was just Chinese writing outlining additional items, such as drinks (hot and cold), congee, and other steamed breakfast items you could get earlier in the day. I decided to order the fried dumplings, which was eight pieces for $5. They make all the food to order, so I waited for a bit while they did this. All the cooking is viewable through their large window, where I could see four women all busy pleating dumplings. Another woman was busy mixing a huge vat of what appeared to be pork and chive paste for dumplings. They called out to me when my dumpling order was ready, and I decided to eat one fresh. I took one bite, and BAM! It was crispy on the outside, super juicy and well seasoned on the inside. It was like the perfect fried dumpling. I did not regret eating one right away; I was only sad that Chris couldn’t enjoy these immediately with me and would have to eat them an hour or so later after I brought them home. I cannot recall the last time I was that happy and satisfied having a freshly made dumpling for takeout. These are like the dumplings that used to excite me when I first moved to New York, when I lived in Elmhurst and would occasionally go to the very popular Lao Bei Fang in Elmhurst’s “Chinatown.” Unfortunately, Lao Bei Fang, while still going strong in its newer location directly on the main drag of Elmhurst on Broadway (when I first moved to New York, it was in a tiny space on Whitney, which is a more obscure street) has since lost its magic since the owner no longer makes the dumplings himself and has his staff make them (good for him, but bad for us).

So while it’s nowhere as convenient now taking the train downtown to drop off and pick up Kaia every weekday while she’s in 3K in Manhattan Chinatown, it’s actually a positive in more ways than one. I get constant access to all my Asian greens, fresh tofu, and noodles. I can revisit my favorite bakeries and businesses as often as I’d like (or as much as my cholesterol/waist line allow). And I can also check out and really explore other sections and businesses in Chinatown that I’ve never given myself time to do before. So many places around East Broadway look authentic and delicious (not to mention that the prices on this side are definitely cheaper!), and they deserve to get more business… and my business.

“Oh, she eats well!”

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Our interactions with the teachers at Kaia’s new school have been a lot more limited than at our last school. We’re not allowed to enter the classroom as we please like we could at our last school. They keep the doors locked at all times. The only real time we can talk to them is at drop off (which Chris rarely does), or at pickup. At pickup, Kaia’s Chinese teacher has left, so there is another teacher’s assistant there along with the main teacher, but they are not the ones in charge of getting Kaia ready for dismissal. That’s the admin’s job. So I usually end up asking the admin quick questions about Kaia’s day. She always seems a bit frazzled, so I try not to ask too many things at once.

The other day, the admin wasn’t there, and another one of the teachers got Kaia ready and brought her to the door to meet me. I recognized the teacher’s face but forgot her name, so I reintroduced myself so that she’d tell me her name, too. I asked her how Kaia’s day was. She didn’t really give much of a response other than, “It was good.” But when I asked her how she ate, her face immediately broke into a huge grin and she said, “Oh, she eats well! She eats a LOT! She definitely enjoys eating and has no problem there at all!”

I laughed. Well, I already had a feeling she was eating well given the admin had told me, plus they had written us quick “kiddie grams” for her first two weeks, so we got quick summaries of how she ate, played, and interacted during the day. But it makes me happy to know that my baby is eating well when I am not there and that she doesn’t need much help in that area. I want Pookster to have a happy, healthy relationship with food and to eat to her heart’s content…. as long as it’s not processed garbage.

Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

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I recently started reading a book called Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood, written by Lucy Jones. The term “matrescence” still doesn’t seem to be recognized by the dictionary in the year 2024, which is quite sad and pathetic considering time has evolved. Matrescence refers to the state of a person becoming a mother and all that this transition entails. I first heard of the term in a news article my friend linked to me, which I think was in NPR, about matrescence and how it doesn’t get nearly as much research, news coverage, or talk as it should. My friend sent this to me as she was sharing with me how much her body and her mind had changed after giving birth. She said it was hard to describe, but the way she thought about things and saw the world was completely different. She expected it to be different after becoming a mother, but she wasn’t prepared for exactly how different her perspective would be in her postpartum state.

A lot happens to a person when they become a mother, both mentally and physically, yet somehow, we’re all expected to just “bounce back” in every sense of the word after giving birth. Children do not give birth to themselves; mothers give birth to them, and that’s a very wild and intense ride, and for some women, can even be traumatic. To this day, the 25 hours I spent in labor from beginning to end was the most intense 25 hours of my entire freaking life; I doubt anything will ever top that – physically, mentally, emotionally. IT WAS BEYOND INTENSE. It is said that it takes somewhere between two to four years for a woman to feel like “herself” again after giving birth. Unfortunately, in the U.S., you’re meant to go back to work the next week, in six weeks, and if you’re “lucky” like me, in the next 16-20 weeks. So who cares if you are “yourself” again!

A lot has resonated with me as I am going through this book, but what I wasn’t expecting was this excerpt near the beginning:

“During pregnancy, cells are exchanged between the mother and fetus in the placenta. When the baby is born, some of those cells remain intact in the mother’s body. For decades. Perhaps forever. The phenomenon is called microchimerism. The exchange creates what the leading geneticist Dr. Diana Bianchi calls “a permanent connection which contributes to the survival of both individuals.

“Cells have been found in subsequent siblings, too. If you have a younger brother or sister, they may have your cells.”

I figured that something would likely be left behind from my baby after giving birth, especially given the role the placenta plays and how that also needs to be birthed out of you, but I didn’t realize that my baby’s cells could stay in me potentially forever. Nor did I ever think that any subsequent siblings would have their older siblings’ cells in them. But that then made me stop and think: Wow. That means that I physically have some of Ed’s cells in me. He actually is a part of me, and in more ways than I had previously thought or known. I always knew that a part of Kaia would be in me, and I’d obviously be in her, but Ed’s in me? But it gave me this sense of joy and warmth, as strange as it sounds. He may no longer be living, but he physically is still living on in me, through cells that I got from him through our mother.

I think it goes without saying that I am definitely enjoying this book.

“It takes a village” that can even include total strangers

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The last several days, I haven’t been taking the stroller when picking up Kaia. It started when Chris said he wasn’t going to take her in the stroller to school when we got ready early one morning, and so he wanted her to walk. It made perfect sense: the weather was warm and comfortable, and well, Kaia can walk. So she should walk! She tends to walk better (as in, in the right direction and at a decent pace…) with Chris than she does with me, though. She barely will walk the one block from the school to the subway stop in Chinatown with me, so I end up carrying her. Then, when we arrive at Columbus Circle, she will whine and whinge when I ask her to walk just for the two blocks home and insist that, “Mummy carry you! MUMMY CARRY YOU!” So I end up having to tell her if she doesn’t walk, she won’t get <fill in the friend, stuffed animal, toy, food, treat>. When we finally land on a motivator (yesterday, I told her if she didn’t walk, she wouldn’t get to see her friend Jacob this weekend…), she will eagerly hold my hand and walk with me the full two blocks nonstop.

Today, when we got to the corner of the street with two blocks to go, she started crying and asked me to carry her. I said, no, you will walk. Big girls walk, and you are a big girl now! She refused, so she simply sat down in front of the luxury apartment building and just stared up at me blankly. I was not going to let her win this; I do NOT want her always getting her way, even if we were running late to get home today. So I did my usual thing and threatened to take all these things away I knew she wanted. Nothing worked. She just would not budge. And I was not going to let her get what she wanted in this moment. I stood my ground.

Then, a good samaritan appeared out of nowhere. A slightly older woman with a big smile came up to us and kneeled down to Kaia. “Hey there!” the woman said in an upbeat voice. “What’s going on here? You don’t wanna walk with your mommy? You just don’t feel like it, huh? Well, how about this: if you don’t want to walk with Mommy, then I can take you with me! You want to come to my dance class with me? It’ll be so much fun! And then after, I’ll take you to my house! How about that?”

Pookster peered up at her and gave her a slight side eye. Then, she looked at me to see what my expression said. I simply smiled. After a few seconds, Pooks jumped up, grabbed my hand, and we started walking. I thanked the nice woman and wished her well, and we were on our merry way home.

“Sometimes, it just takes another person to chime in for a bit, and all is well in the world!” the woman said gleefully, as she wished us a good night.

Who is part of my village? All of New York City who has done things to entertain Kaia, soothe her, make her laugh, play peekaboo with her, and encouraged her to walk with her friggin’ parents properly.

Neighborly neighbors and my fixed earrings

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I was rummaging through my vast earring collection a few days ago when I came across a pair of earrings that Chris’s cousin had made me. She had taken a jewelry making class last year, and with that she decided to use her newly learned skills to make all the women in the family earrings for Christmas presents. It was so sweet of her. She’s always been a very crafty person. She’s knitted and crocheted Kaia a number of different clothing pieces, from mittens to hats and even more complex pieces like sweaters. As someone who enjoys creating arts, crafts, and homemade food, I really appreciate her hand-crafted pieces and the time and effort she puts into them. Anyone can buy a gift; not everyone is willing to put the time and effort into making it with their own hands for someone else.

Unfortunately, I only ever got to wear those earrings once before I broke them. Me being me, I overstuffed my carry-on bag that held the earrings, and tone of the earring backings fell off. The way it broke could not easily be fixed unless I found a new replacement piece, so I left it in my jewelry box and just let it sit. Though I figured someone in our neighborhood must know of a place where I could buy a replacement piece, so I posted in our Upper West Side Neighbors group for a recommendation on recommendations.

Amazingly, someone who is an artist herself responded. She said she’d have the finding needed to fix it, so she’d help me do it herself. I just had to come to her apartment. So yesterday, I went to her place after my dentist appointment, and she showed me the piece she’d glue on the earring back to fix it. I was truly amazed at her generosity, plus the fact that she’d so willingly let a stranger into her apartment. She lives in a co-op building in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, where she uses the larger bedroom as her studio. If I hadn’t known any better when I walked in, I would just assume this was a work space and not originally intended as a bedroom! She said to leave the earrings with her so that after the glue dried, she could test it to ensure it really was successful. She’s already messaged to tell me her handiwork was a win, so I’m planning to go back up to her place to pick them up. I offered to pay her, but she insisted she just wanted to be a good neighbor and meet people in the ‘hood. So I’ll likely bring her flowers as a token of appreciation.

People complain a lot about Facebook, but I’ve really enjoyed feeling like I’m really a part of the Upper West Side through the Buy-Nothing and Neighbors groups. It really makes me feel like I’m a part of a real community and that people do care and look out for each other here. Yes, people do genuinely look out for each other here, in this big concrete jungle. Just in the last week, a kid’s new giraffe stuffed animal got returned, and in the craziest incidents, a real diamond tennis bracelet got returned to its owner! It’s really not terrible living in a big city!

The baby tooth that could

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I went in for a dental cleaning today and told my dentist that my destabilized baby tooth (thanks, pregnancy) felt even more destabilized in the last few weeks. He took x-rays of the tooth and showed me what it looked like.

“The bone has completely degraded underneath the baby tooth!” he exclaimed while looking at the x-ray through the light. “The baby tooth has nothing to hang onto! It’s really any day now!”

My childhood dentist told me that I’d be lucky if my two baby teeth lasted until age 30. I’m turning 39 in just a few months. The only reason this baby tooth got destabilized is due to pregnancy tooth decay in the neighboring tooth, which resulted in a root canal in 2022 that shook up the baby tooth. All dentists I’ve seen since childhood have told me they’ve been amazed I’ve kept both baby teeth in such good shape for this long; I’m an anomaly. And as each year goes on and the baby teeth stay in tact, I’m even more of a freak (or miracle?) to them.

We decided I’d just wait until the tooth fell out on its own. That day is going to be utterly terrifying and relieving at the same time. I can tell it’s gotten looser in the last few months. I consciously try to avoid eating anything hard on my right side because of it. The day it falls out is also going to be a sad and bloody one, an end of an era. I just hope that when it does finally happen that I’m not in a public place; the last thing I want to do is freak people out by trying to run to the nearest bathroom with blood running down my mouth and chin. And then, at that point, I’ll need to get bone grafted for a potential implant, which will not only require surgery, but also be quite expensive. The dentist told me that I should be reserving next year’s dental allowance from my insurance for this. I’ll need to brace myself.

This is what getting older means: spending more money on annoying health-related procedures. It’s mortality staring me in the face.

Listening as a skill

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A former colleague I was friendly with reached out to me a few weeks ago to let me know that she had relocated back to New York in the last year from San Francisco. She asked if I was still here and if I was, that she’d like to meet up for coffee to catch up. I hadn’t seen her in over two years, so I thought it would be good to see her. We met up late Friday afternoon for some tea and sat at a park in Chinatown before I went to pick up Kaia from school.

We chatted for over an hour about all the usual things: her relocation, our respective work situations, people we still kept in touch with from our last company. We talked about Kaia and parenthood, and we also talked about health. I was pretty stunned when she recounted to me things I’d shared with her over three years ago when she was last in town, and we met for coffee. I invited her and another former colleague to hang out on my roof, and she remembered me telling her about my cubital tunnel syndrome and random travel anecdotes that I didn’t even remember telling her. I was really endeared that she remembered, and it felt really comforting. I’m so used to being a broken record nowadays and sharing the same stories over and over again that I forget who I have shared them with… and frankly, who even cares and retains them.

But it made me realize how it feels like people have such short attention spans now that they don’t really listen. People complain about news articles being too long. There are even people now who think that some TikTok or Instagram videos are too long, so they just swipe to the next one that is faster. Chris even complains sometimes when his brother or I are telling a story and he keeps saying, “Get to the point!” People don’t seem to appreciate the art of story telling the way I always did as a kid and even now, as an adult. But I think the best stories are nuanced and have interesting arcs. There’s always a good lead up. Characters have different subtle personality quirks that only reveal themselves with time. And it’s comforting to know that there are still some people in existence who really do take the time to listen, and even remember.

Counting and Cracking

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Tonight, we went to see the visiting Australian (and Sri Lankan) show Counting and Cracking at NYU’s Skirball Theater. It’s a show that takes us through a multi-generational journey of a Sri Lankan-Australian family from 1956 to 2004, political turmoil of a divided Sri Lanka, and relatable stories of family love, conflict, pain, and forgiveness. Chris’s brother originally took their parents to see the show in Melbourne, and he told us about it and the fact that it would be coming to New York in the fall. So we got tickets and went tonight. Even though the show is three hours long with two intermissions, which is quite long, it didn’t feel like it dragged at all; instead, it actually felt like it was gripping you along, forcing you to wonder what would happen next. The show tries to condense a lot of history into a short amount of time, and it does it really well. I never once felt like it was too long or as though I was losing interest in the plot.

I found myself moved to tears at certain points of the show; I don’t think that’s happened at a show for me in ages. At the end of the show, Radha talks about how she would likely have never left Sri Lanka, even in the dire political state it was in, had it not been for Siddhartha, who she was pregnant with. She gave up the home that her grandfather built from scratch; it was a home her husband thought she’d never, ever give up. She ultimately left Sri Lanka for Australia 100 percent because of him: she wanted him to have a better life and to be safe. These moments in movies and theater just hit me differently since my fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood journey. It’s almost like my brain and body have been rewired since becoming a mother; it’s the process of “matrescence” that doesn’t get enough research or attention. Parents really do sacrifice so much for their kids, and most of their kids will never quite grasp even a fraction of the sacrifices until they (may) become parents themselves.

 

Beef rendang, coconut rice, and the rice cooker that decided to stop working

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It seems to be a once-a-year activity now: I decided to defrost the beef chuck I picked up at Costco a few months ago to make a batch of rendang using the Sambal Lady’s rendang spice packet (in partnership with Burlap and Barrel, who I have grown to love and admire). Last year, I made the rendang with a leg of lamb I cut up. In 2022, I made it with beef chuck I purchased on sale at Whole Foods. Just like the previous two years, while the process was simplified greatly given I didn’t have to source all the different spices with Auria’s spice blend packet, it was still a labor of love since it takes low and slow cooking and stirring over the course of four hours. Prior to having a fully remote job, this would have been unthinkable as a weeknight meal unless I did it on the Sunday before Monday dinner. But I was able to adjust the heat and stir the beef mixture between meetings and work tasks yesterday, and the beef rendang came out beautifully.

I planned to serve the rendang with coconut rice (infused with some cardamom pods) made in our rice cooker, but I was sad to see that after 14 years of operation, the rice cooker decided to stop working. I had to salvage the partially boiled rice by dumping it all into a sauce pan and finishing it over the stove. RIP rice cooker, and hello to your updated replacement (the same brand) coming in a couple days!

I wasn’t sure if Kaia would enjoy the rendang given these spice packets were the original hot ones, and she’s recently been complaining about spicy food (that friggin’ Dragons Love Tacos book that demonizes spicy food!). So I was very pleasantly surprised to see her carefully inspecting the beef shreds, tearing them apart, and daintily placing small pieces in her mouth and chewing. She’d hesitate, ask for water or milk, then go back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. She did say the rendang was spicy, but she kept going back for more. This is ALL a good sign! I’m trying to raise a spice/heat loving little eater!

Was the rendang a big effort? Yes. But was it worth it? Darn right it was. And we have plenty of tasty leftovers for the next few days to keep the ROI going.

The grass is always greener on the other side – from a food perspective

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Whenever we travel, and especially to places with really strong food cultures, like France, Italy, and pretty much anywhere and everywhere in Asia, I always think how amazing it would be to live in a place that truly values food and freshness. The U.S. was built to feed a lot of people en masse, which basically means that we’re feeding for the sake of feeding people here (quantity matters, full bellies matter) instead of thinking about quality or sustainability of raw ingredients. So whenever I hear about people who are of a similar age as I am, originally born and raised in a Western nation like the U.S., but have done the “reverse migration” of going back to their country of origin, I am always intrigued, and my ears tend to perk up.

In the last year, I discovered the freelance journalist Clarissa Wei and her cookbook Made in Taiwan. She is of Taiwanese descent, but she was born and raised in Southern California. She has since moved back to Taiwan and is living there with her husband and young child. When I did a search for her, I actually realized I had read endless articles she had written about Chinese and Taiwanese food previously, but I had just not remembered the by-line on those articles. Her cookbook reads like a journal or blog, peppered with lots of heavily researched factoids and also personal stories of her own experiences in the U.S. and in Taiwan. She says that when Costco opened in Taiwan, she and her husband got a membership and treated their visits there like her parents used to treat treks to Ranch 99 in California: while her parents would get excited at stocking up on all their favorite Taiwanese and Asian ingredients and fresh produce, she and her husband now meticulously plan what they will buy at Costco: avocados, bagels, and all the Western things that you cannot easily find in Taiwan that they missed having easy access to while in the U.S. “The grass is always greener on the other side,” she lamented. Prior to moving to Taiwan, she used to get excited about having easy access to the night markets and all her favorite Taiwanese dishes. Now that she has all that literally at her doorstep, she wants the American things that are either far more expensive in Taiwan or more difficult to find.

Another funny anecdote she shared that actually made me laugh out loud: she said that her standard Taiwanese stove top was able to get so hot that it would make restaurant-quality fried rice with real “wok hei” as I always get excited about. I always love getting stir-fried noodles and rice at restaurants because “wok hei” is just impossible at home with our stove top. On the flip side for Clarissa, it was very challenging to impossible to slow simmer anything on her stove top. So she went to a shop to see what it would cost to get her range replaced with an American-style one. The shopkeeper looked at her like she’d gone crazy and said, “Why would you do that? Do you want food with no flavor?” The sheer horror!

We always want what we cannot get easily and romanticize the things we don’t have. Off the top of my head, I think that if we leave the U.S., I would most definitely miss not having to think about how to read food labels (this is a funny one, isn’t it?). In New York City specifically, I’d miss easy access to literally every cuisine on earth, somewhere across these five boroughs. I’d also probably miss easy access to boneless, skinless chicken thighs, or trays of neatly cubed beef chuck, or a boneless leg of lamb. I am American, after all, raised in a western country that is used to having its citizens being quite far removed from the process of animal slaughter.