Eating Without English

   Without the assistance of a young person to enthusiastically translate orders for you (the young generation all seem to have a good grasp on English in Hong Kong), eating at a local vegetarian place was an experience.  First of all, to find the restaurant recommended by the concierge, we had an X on a map because there was no English name for the restaurant.  We arrived at the block with the X and were confronted with five different restaurants.  Luckily, we remembered that a lotus flower was a Buddhist symbol and we chose the one restaurant with that symbol.  Upstairs, we pointed to dishes and savored every bite of the delicious fake meat.  We figured out how to wash our chopsticks and tea cups with our tea prior to eating and we learned how to eat our dishes from the tiny bowl we were given.  But, the most striking experience of our visit to a local restaurant was the absolutely genuine smiles from the other diners and the owner.  The diners waved goodbye after we had learned how to eat from them with the same happy faces as the people in the street from whom we asked directions as we wandered the city for three days learning what a truly wonderful city is.


Here is the vegetarian place, note the pink Lotus Flower on the right: