Tea Writings

A blog about tea from the desk of Cecilia Tan
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Chinatown, Dollars and Scents

May 18, 2009 By: ctan Category: Tea Musings, Tea Reviews

Sunday found me in New York’s Chinatown, where I stopped before heading home after a weekend in the city for both business and pleasure.

This is the Chinatown of my youth, a place my family almost always went when we were in the city for any reason. (That is, after we’d moved to New Jersey from Manhattan when I was around five.) If we had out-of-town guests or family, and had spent the afternoon sightseeing, we would finish the day with dinner in the basement dining room of the Hunan House on Mott Street, or in later years the upstairs eatery of Say Eng Look (“Four Five Six”).

One night we brought my uncle, who was doing post-doctoral work in marine biology at U. of Southern Mississippi, and some of his researcher/grad school friends there, when they were on a road trip from USM to Wood’s Hole in Massachusetts. One of the guys on the trip was from Singapore, and when the waiter brought the hot steamed towels before the meal for our hands, he pushed it into his face and nearly cried. (more…)