Hong Kong Egg Tarts
by Brooke Xin Lai
There is a small Chinese plaza 10 minutes away from our apartment. It’s near a major intersection, the one marked by bleak yellow lights and flimsy road signs and whitish-blackish-greyish cars that honk just a bit too loud for a Sunday afternoon. Not helpful, I know. I’ve given up long ago trying to memorize road names. My mom always knows where to go, and I always follow.
We walk across the gravel lot and enter through a revolving door. It’s all the same copy-and-paste of every other Chinese plaza in the city: bleak, white, and smelling like chalkboard. Glossy tiled floors. Fluorescent lights. A trash can. A metal bench. There’s a hair salon, an electronics store, a jewelry shop that’s closed, each with their own tacky, overly-saturated store signs hung up in the front. Nobody goes to these places; the grocery store is the most popular. It’s vibrant, it’s chaotic, it’s loud. It’s a bubble bursting with movement and colour and aisles of characters stacked in a language I never learned to read. And you hear it before you see it: there’s always an angry Chinese lady yelling at the other angry Chinese lady at the cashier. Both of their voices are weighed with the same mourning. Both of their faces are wrinkled with the same sorrow. Everyone here looks like an angry Chinese lady. Their eyebrows sink further into their skulls and the corners of their lips drip down their cheeks like tears.
I see this look on my mother sometimes. I see the light in her eyes dim when she thinks I’m not paying attention. Her hair becomes gray and her skin hardens, like a diamond under pressure.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“To the bakery,” she replies. “I don’t want to make breakfast tomorrow.”
We arrive at a store not much larger than my room. There are two ladies by the cashier who spare us a single glance as we walk in before turning around and shoving pineapple buns into plastic bags. It smells like bread and butter and egg wash.
“What are we getting?” I ask my mom. It’s 8 pm, and they're almost sold out.
“Anything you want,” she says. “But get me some red bean buns. Just one. Maybe two. Look, there’s a discount if you buy 6. Let’s buy 6.”
I grab a tray and a tong and begin scanning the array of yellow display cases. Everything here is yellow: buttercup walls, golden buns, amber trays. I pick up a few buns half-heartedly until my gaze flickers to the innermost corner of the room, where the egg tarts are on display. They glisten like jewels behind the plastic case: the brightest yellow in this yellow room, like rows of dandelions.
“Do you want egg tarts?” my mom asks. She notices me staring.
“Don’t you want another red bean bun?” I respond.
“It’s okay, I like both.” She starts shuffling through her bag for her wallet. “Go get one. One for Dad, too.”
I want to tell her that we’ll go over the discount limit if I get one for Dad, but I’m sure she already knows.
We bring our items to the register and one of the ladies starts packaging our sweets. They use crinkly plastic bags, each bun individually wrapped and secured with a stapler that doesn’t use any staples. I’m not sure what it’s called.
“Business is still going well, huh?” my mom suddenly asks while collecting her receipt, the machine giving a small whirr as the numbers print.
The lady smiles and briefly looks up from her task. “Yes, we’re very fortunate.”
“The store looks exactly the same as it did 20 years ago,” my mom continues.
“Oh, really?” The packaging lady is paying attention now. “You’ve been visiting for so long!”
“Yes! Ever since I first moved to this area.”
“Wow, we must have moved here around the same time then.”
“How long has it been?”
“26 years.”
“Ah, amazing! Your red bean buns have always been the best.”
“Thank you, thank you. We have so many customers; so sorry we didn’t recognize you.”
Twenty-six years in business. Twenty-six years of working in the same space, with the same people, making the same bread recipe. Twenty-six years is longer than I have been breathing. It occurs to me then just how long my mom has been alive.
“What makes the red bean buns here better than other stores?” I ask my mom as we walk back to our car.
“Less sweet,” she replies. “Westerners like to put in too much sugar. People like it and they get money. The red bean paste here is real. I can actually taste the red bean.”
I scoff. “Then why haven’t you brought me here before? If it’s so good.”
“We live too far now.” She sighs. “Back when I was pregnant with you, I was always craving something sweet. So your father would always buy me red bean buns from this store.”
“That’s so sweet.” I smile. “I can’t imagine him doing something like that now.”
“He didn’t do it back then, either. I had to ask him,” she laughs. “He kept saying he didn’t want to drive so far, but I kept asking him to and eventually he did. And every time he bought them, he’d come home and complain to me. I was very confused. I told him, ‘If you decide to go out and do something, why complain about doing it?’ But that’s your father. He always has something to say.”
My mom always jokes about how she doesn’t love my dad, about how one day when I’m old enough to support myself, she’ll divorce him and marry a rich man. She doesn’t sound like she’s joking when she says that, but I think she does love him. I think she just doesn’t realize it yet, or she doesn’t want to.
It’s drizzling outside now, so we run into the car with our sweets tucked under our jackets. My mom suggests that we eat some of the egg tarts before we drive back home. They’re better while they’re fresh, she always says.
I hold one of them in my palms, the smooth, tin foil cup oily with butter. Immediately, the entire car smells like sugar and egg wash. The centre of the tart is a bright, yolky yellow. Large as the sun. Round as the moon. I feel like I’m holding the entire world in my hands.
“Things were really hard back then, you know,” my mom says as she takes a bite out of her tart. “My whole family was in China, and your dad’s parents kept nagging me. Is it a boy or a girl? Do you plan on getting a job? What school are you sending them to?”
“And what did you say?” I ask, eyes wide.
“I said that I didn’t know.” She shrugs. “I just felt so alone. Your dad’s company went bankrupt, so he decided to travel the world with his friends. We had no income, and I was alone. Everything was so hard.
“And then after you were born, I bought the bar to try and earn some money. You remember that right? Sunny’s? But I really hated it, you know. I never got to see you because I worked so late and slept in the morning. Your dad took care of you back then, but I was really sad.”
“It’s good that he’s working now,” I say.
“Yes, and things have been easier,” my mom agrees. “He definitely started trying harder after I broke my back working the bar. And it’s a good thing I sold that place. This office job pays a lot, and I can work from home and take care of you. And once you go to university, everything will settle down.”
“I think you’ll have to go through difficult things like this when you’re older, too, but maybe you won’t. There are so many more opportunities for your generation. And you’re too smart to not finish university and marry a good man.”
My mother’s voice rings in my ears and I feel the weight of her words settling in on my shoulders. A thick silence falls between us as I take my first bite of the egg tart. It’s salty and crisp, dry in my mouth. I don’t know what to say.
I stare at the rain pattering on the glass and I start to cry. Quiet, mellow tears. It's pouring now.