Please Join Me for Breakfast
Yesterday was Saturday, and the weather was lovely when I woke up. I had wanted for a long time to go to the Chinese supermarket downtown to buy some food, and I'd also been craving breakfast from the bakery next door. I left home around 7:30 in the morning while my husband was still sound asleep. That's his habit — since retiring, he sleeps until nine or ten every day and wakes up naturally. I wake up around seven, or sometimes six-thirty, and simply can't fall back asleep. That's my habit too, since my hometown is in Northeast China, where I was used to getting up around six every morning.
But when I got downtown, I found the Chinese supermarket wasn't open yet — on Saturdays it doesn't open until ten. I hadn't realized that, since I hadn't checked online beforehand. So I just took a leisurely walk and had a little breakfast instead. I went to this bakery, a shop that sells bread and also serves bread-based breakfasts, along with coffee, tea, juice, and chocolate drinks. As soon as I walked in, the waiter greeted me in a rather unfamiliar tone and asked whether I wanted the French menu or the English one. I joked that either was fine — he could even bring out a Chinese menu and I'd manage just as well. He smiled and led me to a table, then handed me a French menu, which I began reading carefully. I'd bought croissants and raisin bread here before, and this bakery's food really does taste different from elsewhere — quite authentic. Looking at the menu, I saw it was divided into several categories: waffle breakfasts, bread breakfasts, sandwich breakfasts, and also large loaves meant for groups of guests dining together. I can't drink coffee, and the other drinks were too sweet for my taste, so I chose green tea. There were only three kinds: the first was some Japanese tea whose name I couldn't recall, the second was jasmine tea (which, strictly speaking, isn't really green tea anymore), and the third was the mint tea Arabs drink, loaded with sugar, which I don't like either. Normally I only like Longjing tea or very light Japanese green tea. So I thought I'd try the Japanese tea. I remembered that once, when my sister was hosting a Japanese tea delegation, she brought us back a pack of Japanese green tea — very pale in color, but with a wonderfully long-lasting, soft, sweet flavor. So I ordered a cup of Japanese green tea to see how it compared.
When the tea arrived, it turned out to be a teabag — and in a nylon mesh bag, no less, which I dislike most of all, since steeping it in hot water releases all sorts of chemical compounds. But there's no choice about that in Europe, so I made do. The teaware was lovely, though, and when they brought the bread, they used the typical Western wooden bread board — actually a newer style made of bamboo, but finely crafted nonetheless — along with a small bread knife. I dropped the tea leaves into the water, though it was really only lukewarm. I cut the bread into small pieces and, using a napkin, brought each piece to my mouth one at a time — it really did taste good, just as it had the last time I'd bought it. The tea had to steep before its color and flavor could come through. I ate the bread slowly, and by the time I'd nearly finished, the tea had only just begun to take on a bit of color. It was nowhere near as fragrant or full-bodied as the Japanese tea my sister had once brought back. Still, it beat coffee or those sweet drinks, or ice water.
I ate slowly, watching the crowds passing by outside the window — mostly tourists from all over the world: white, Black, mixed-race, brown, and Asian. There seemed to be more Japanese visitors these days, while Chinese visitors, for some reason, had become much scarcer — nothing like a few years ago, when the streets downtown used to be full of Chinese people. I thoroughly enjoyed my breakfast, and found myself thinking that if friends ever came to visit, I'd have to bring them here to try a真正 — a truly authentic Western breakfast, right in the heart of Europe, so they too could experience this Western way of life.
I finished my breakfast slowly and mindfully. As I left, the waiter said goodbye and hoped I'd come again, in a rather curious yet very polite tone — as if he'd never seen a Chinese person before, and was somehow struck by the novelty of one suddenly appearing, speaking French, and bidding farewell with Western manners. Whatever the case, I like to think that we Chinese are perfectly capable of blending into Western society, and of living just as Westerners do.
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