Canto Cutie - Volume 2

Eating Siu Mai Doesn’t
Make You Cantonese
by Kristie Song
As a kid, the highlight of every week was Sunday morning dim sum with
my maternal grandparents, Gong-gong and Po-po. We’d carpool to
restaurants with names like “88 Seafood House”, grand places that looked
like banquet halls: each filled from corner to corner with large oval tables
draped in the same thick, off-white linen. Gong-gong always marched in,
cutting past hostesses in clean black uniforms calling out numbers,
through the clangs of tea cups and chopsticks, and straight to the
restaurant manager—he seemed to be chummy with each one—and we’d
be seated at once, to the dismay of families gripping their numbers with
clenched, white fists.
Then, stout middle-aged women pushing steel carts would bark their
goods at us.
Pineapple bun! Do you want it? Do you want them cut?
Gong-gong would offer only a nod or shake of the head, his gaze
swimming in the small porcelain tea cup near his folded hands. And so
was the rhythm of our mornings: stern women coming and going, Gong
gong nodding or scowling, the table filling and emptying with small steel
steamers.
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