The other day I stopped on Queen Victoria Street (which, like most roads in the area south of Central, is a steep cobblestone hill) to eat lunch. There were people waiting on the sidewalk to get in, although the place, typically of Hong Kong restaurants, has no door but is entirely open on the street side. I waited for a while, enduring being cut in line by several people who were more accustomed to the system and who knew how to yell to the one waiter in Cantonese. He finally motioned me to a table in the corner, with three other women eating alone at a small round table. All around us, people were talking, and I could see through the crowd a small window to the kitchen, where three or so men were cooking. I pointed to the characters above my selection on the menu: “stir noodle with vegetable.” They came with the green stalks of “vegetable,” a brown ladling of sauce on top and a bowl of broth. I took two black plastic chopsticks from the jar on the table, and started my attempt at eating. My chopstick abilities are acceptable, but don’t feel nearly so when exercised on a huge plate of noodles in front of three local women. I avoided looking at my seatmates for several minutes, embarrassed, sure that they were scornful of my foreignness and disgusted by the sight of noodles constantly falling out of my mouth as I ate. Finally I mustered my courage to look around the table, and my eyes settled on the woman across from me, who had ordered the same dish, only with little shrimp dumplings on the side. I watched her for a while, hiding a smile of relief: it was exhilaratingly comforting to see the long strands dangling from her mouth, just as mine had.

¶ 5:53 PM