You can see from the top of the hill
Tangled streets and the mystery there
Painted lanterns hang from balconies
People running everywhere
Chinatown, with all your dark mystery
Chinatown, Chinatown
Your spell is capturing me
Lovely ladies with almond eyes
Dressed in silk and laces
Twilight falls and the shadows move
Silently in secret places
Chinatown, with all your dark mystery
Chinatown, Chinatown
Your spell is capturing me
You've got me under your spell
You've got me under your spell
You've got me under your spell
You've got me under your spell
by the Doobie Brothers
The who?, you say.
Not The Who. The Doobie Brothers.
I took a short trip to San Francisco with my sister last month. It was the very first time that I went on a non-work related trip without my husband and Medha. She was crushed and still hasn't forgiven me completely. But, I have to tell you! It's a must-do! Leave the grinch behind. Walk into every store you feel like. Eat wherever you want, whenever you want. There are no endless questions: where are we going? do we have to go there? when will we get there? I need to go pee-pee really bad. None of that! We went to meet our youngest maushi and bhaoji whom we had last met over 7 years ago. We spent a day with them and then took off on sister-to-sister quality time in the heart of San Francisco.
I didn't take nearly as many pictures this year as I did last year. I wanted to see things with my own eyes instead of through the lens. And one place I wanted to experience, smell and taste was Chinatown.
We took the cable car from Market Street and hopped off at one of the Chinatown stops. We had no clue where we were, where we were headed, or what we were going to do. The first thing we noticed was that everything was written in Chinese. And then we came across this beautiful Chinese Hospital.
I spied some fresh produce in open boxes along the wall of a corner store in the building ahead.
It was very difficult to not buy any of this stuff!
Just then the delivery van arrived and Chinese people of all sizes and shapes swarmed to the store.
Everyone stopped politely and waited for me to take my picture. I tried to tell them to go about their business and buy all those fresh veggies but they were far too polite. They continued to wait. So I moved on...and came upon this store that sold dried seafood.
I recognized only a couple of the dried seafood in this inviting array. Once I started looking at it at close quarters, it wasn't all that attractive anymore. The smell? Let me just say that there were no incense sticks readily available nearby.
We wandered through the streets. Was this what China is like, I wondered! I looked for matching baby doll shoes to go with Medha's Qui Pao dress but they were either out of the color or the size. I made up for it by buying myself a simple but elegant pair of pumps.
We walked by a store that sold herbs and all kinds of exotic dried roots. Some of the roots looked like they could be an insect or a small animal. But roots they were.
There were times when I felt like I was back in India. There were "everything under the sun is sold here" stores. From sweets to shoes to clothing to toys. And they displayed their wares outside the store and hung from the doorways, just like the little shops in India.
Since my sister hadn't had dim sum before, we asked around for a good restaurant in the area. Everyone told us to go to Ray Eestuhn. We walked down this street, looking for Ray Eestuhn ...
...till someone told us exactly where it was. We would have never found it on our own.
There was a wait. We didn't mind as we had much to talk about. We had been talking non-stop since we met at Denver Airport and it didn't seem like that tide was going to ebb any time soon. Great Eastern was filled with the locals and there were very few non-Chinese in the restaurant. I was thrilled at the thought of authentic dim sum and a little apprehensive at the thought of biting into some of the dried stuff that we had seen earlier.
We figured out how to order dim sum over cups of delicious hot jasmine tea.
We had several different types of dim sum. The most interesting was fish wrapped in seaweed and deep fried. We also had sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves. And steamed rolls. The meal cost us only about $15 and we were quite full!
I wanted to explore Chinatown some more but Lombard Street and Fisherman's Wharf beckoned. Maybe next time.
Chinatown, with all your dark mystery
Chinatown, Chinatown
Your spell has captured me
