Chinatown

A cold night
Friends dropped in
We drank tea instead of wine
The kettle hissed
The charcoal glowed
A bright moon shone outside the window
There was nothing special
- But, ah, the plum - the blossom

This ancient Chinese poem about tea with friends sums it up for me pretty well.

I had decided yesterday that if the weather was good, I'd go to Chinatown today. Despite living here so many months, this is the first time I've been there. Vancouver's Chinatown is big, third largest Chinese community outside China - most of Vancouver's 100 000 Chinese live there. I mainly wanted to have brief glimpse, and I wanted to visit some of the tea shops to buy some tea.

Since I wanted to arrive "the proper way", I walked from Granville down West Pender so I would enter through the Chinatown Gates (pictured right). The day was indeed beautiful, and soon I took my jacket off and just walked around in my t-shirt. Vancouver's Chinatown is the real deal - most of the time I was the only Western person within a block, and probably stuck out like a sore thumb.

Ren Ten Tea & Ginseng Company on Main was recommended by my guide book and people on Discover Vancouver forum, so that's where I headed. Beautiful shop, full of huge tins of teas, most of them with names I didn't recognise. In Europe - especially in England, Oolong teas (type of tea between green and black) are not that popular, in fact I've never tasted them - but in here they seem really popular, maybe especially amongst the Chinese population. I had decided in advance that I would get some Jasmine tea - and after browsing some and being unable to decide a lady came to help me. I asked for Jasmine tea and she poured some leaves from a bag to a little cup and allowed me to smell the tea, and I was in love: exactly what I was looking for. She wanted to sell me a huge several hundred gram tin, and I asked for the smallest one they had... which turned out to be that 120 gram box you see in the photo on the left. Everything in the shop was in those kind of beautiful boxes and tins you see that one in - I so wanted to buy more. But I know full well that I still have enough tea left to last me for a while - I'll get some more when I take Chu there, perhaps.

I continued browsing on the streets, popped in to a bakery to get those buns you see on that photo - one with the cross has a chicken filling, and the other one is BBQ pork. These are the kind of buns you see in Hong Kong films - I've always wanted to taste some. Taste is not quite to my Western taste, but I think I could quickly get used to it - the filling was pretty predictable savoury filling, and the bun was pretty predictable bread... not sure about the sweet glazing though. Still, nice enough.

Food shops there were pretty amazing - and selection was obviously catering to the Chinese population, for example fruit selections were small and vegetable selections huge with lot of black roots and things I didn't regocnize. And the amount of dried produce was huge - mainly srimp, fish and other seafood (I think) but mostly stuff I didn't have any idea what they could possibly be. All displayed out on the street in huge bags and boxes with scoops so you could just help yourself. (I didn't. Not that brave yet.)

On my way back I stopped at T & T Supermarket just by the Chinatown Skytrain station - this is a huge Chinese supermarket with lots of... well, Chinese stuff. Live fish, crabs and other seafood warrant a mention as a curiosity - well, if you want to make sure that your seafood is fresh, this is your place. I went in to browse, ended up buying some Dim Sum, thinking that surely Dragon would be disappointed if I didn't have anything for him. In the cashier queue I decided to take some sweets (or cakes, or whatever category these things were) "green tea flavoured rolls" because they looked so nice and green. They don't taste like green tea though - they taste more like sugar and flour, but after two I decided I actually quite liked them. A bit like Turkish delights, in texture.