China Town

Yesterday I took a trip down to China Town with my friend Justin. He's enrolled in an Asian studies class here at Penn State Abington. His teacher asked the class to take pictures of themselves in Philadelphia's China Town district during the Chinese New Year. China Town is a lively place, but I can't imagine what it feels like to someone from China. The gift shops, the restaurants, quaintly foreign for us but to Justin, who is from Taiwan what is it like?

As we sit at the table of Banana Leaf, a Malaysian place next to the Trocadero theater a young man with an attractive date is watching us eat. "Hey buddy, what is that?" He interrupts a cutesy chopstick sword fight with the blonde woman and points the utensil coolly at our appetizer. My mouth is full of peanut-butter squid so I let Justin answer. "Squid and watercress." He says calmly. It takes me several minutes to finish the act of masticating the boiled squid flesh which has been texturized to something between gummy bear and bouncy ball. "Is it any good?" I avert my eyes, carefully extracting a piece of the watercress. It hangs limply from my chopsticks, dark green like spinach. "Yeah," says Justin. His answer is either quite sincere or he lying well. I avoid the squid for the rest of the meal. The stranger questions us again when our main dishes arrive. Again the same two questions seem to keep his eyes straying back to our plates instead of looking at the girl he must have hoped to impress with this sophisticated choice for lunch, "What is it?" and "Is it good?" Once more I'm silent, this time pulling tails off of tasty, but slightly over-cooked shrimp. Justin doesn't seem phased by the questioning. The curious man dons his jacket and baseball cap and him and his date disappear out the front door into the condensing crowd outside the Troc in the fine lite rain that feels like the spritzers in the produce isle at the grocery store only much colder. Outside everything is stratus gray and wet and a far cry from the Indo-Pacific Islands. Justin walks in the direction of the hair salon he wants to visit. We're having a discussion about investing and business. He's very interested.

At the hair salon I'm the only white person. They must not get many of us either because conversation stopped when Justin and I enter together. The place is lively and charismatic but my presence seems almost chilling to the people who resume talking uneasily as I move to take a seat while Justin gets what he came here for. I'm full of egg noodles and hot shrimp broth and it takes him a long time to get his hair cut. I'm nodding off until one of the stylists trips over my outstretched foot. We both apologize rapidly and from then on my feet stay hidden under my chair. I keep making eye contact with a woman who is sitting stone-still, draped with a hair-deflecting orange poncho, in a chair with her back to me. She blinks at the mirror. It is dark by the time we leave.

The thing that fascinates me about China Town are the gift shops. They sell paper lanterns, ninja swords, snacks, tea sets, driftwood furniture, and jade Buddhas. Are there Chinese people who buy this sort of thing? None of the students I know here at Abington do. Is it just to make money from gawking Westerners? Or are there Chinese people who wear the red silk clothes around like there are Americans out in Texas that get married in cowboy hats? Where does the culture end and the cliche begin?