Dim Sum Cart

Abstract

Dim Sum Cart by Arthur Leung Arthur Leung holds an MFA in creative writing (with distinction) from the University of Hong Kong. A winner of the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition, his poems have been published in print magazines, anthologies, and online journals. Dim sum house in Mongkok, the crowded, traditional one with gleaming walls, red flowery carpet, you squeeze through waiters and eaters, tables and chandeliers to your seat. I am a three-month-old dim sum cart coming from the kitchen, tailored in European steel, pieces carefully cut, bent, welded together, and four wheels smooth enough for my pusher to travel at ease, even running over a fallen chopstick or pork bone. You peep through my glass doors into desserts, fried dumplings, fading memories that release your saliva but there are secrets inside – petroleum gas and a stove head to keep the food steaming, and a space for spices, sauces, utensils that make me a walking minikitchen. A luminary in the house, a vehicle embracing human touch and bringing dialogues, as in What is the brownish soup you are stirring on the cart? Good stuff with jujube – newly mixed. Wanna try? My job, hectic as the day, a stark schizophrenia. This round I carry salty dishes – lion’s head, shrimp dumpling, tofu skin roll deep-fried to golden yellow, each in piles of ten to twelve bamboo steamers. Next you see different kinds of steamed buns in snow white, and a giant bamboo basket containing Cantonese sponge cake, along with a whiff of warm butter and coconut milk. During lunch hour my pusher shouts ho yip fan, yet the happy children are already waiting for sweets – egg tarts and sesame balls, waiting for the scent of vanilla and corn oil freshly delivered from the oven. A clamour bursts out each time they discover a brand-new dish on a familiar cart that returns like a revolving merry-go-round, even for one moment all dim sum carts in the house turn into wooden horses, galloping giraffes, flying tigers and although you may have failed to notice any of this, the appetite of Hongkongers is driven by a symphony of nostalgic tastes. DIM SUM PHOTO: ALICE CHEUNG Visit worldlit.org to read Arthur Leung’s poem “Silk Stocking Milk Tea.” WORLDLIT.ORG 63 ...