yum! yum!

I imagine that most people have a favourite dining place, somewhere outside the home that they particularly enjoy visiting. For me and Paula, it’s China Land, which is located in Fanling Centre, a small but lively shopping mall a short walk south of Fanling station:

Unlike the traditional Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong, China Land is a very small establishment—the frontage in the photo is the width of the place, and the depth is about the same, meaning that, excluding the kitchen, it is probably no more than 50 square metres in area. Also unlike traditional restaurants, it doesn’t have movable tables and chairs but fixed bench seats and tables, like regular cafes, although the seats are much more comfortable. However, this arrangement means that it’s not a practical venue for parties larger than four.

After scanning our vaccination records—you can’t get into eating places, other than fast-food joints, without doing so—we picked out a table at the front of the restaurant. Paula chose a set meal for two from the menu, while I suggested that we add siu lung bao (‘small dragon bread’), one of my favourite dim sum delicacies, to our order.

First to arrive were two bowls of traditional soup and a plate of stir-fried beef:

The large lump in my bowl of soup is sai see kwat, a cut of pork that is unusual in that when cooked it goes soft and falls apart (pork usually goes hard when cooked). I’ve tried to obtain this meat when I’m back in Penrith, but English butchers cut up pig carcasses differently, and so far I’ve been unsuccessful.

One indication that China Land is an upmarket establishment is the two pairs of chopsticks, one to eat with and one to select food from the plates in front of you. Needless to say, however, we don’t observe this nicety when there are just the two of us.

The next dish to arrive was a kind of salad (on the left):

And then came the siu lung bao:

Although bao means ‘bread’ in Cantonese, these are actually dumplings. They contain minced pork and broth, and it’s usual to apply a few drops of vinegar before eating one. In fact, I like to place the entire dumpling in my mouth at once, so I can enjoy the explosion of taste that occurs when the dumpling is squashed and chewed.

I rated the last dish to arrive as the best:

I neglected to ask Paula how the dishes in this set meal were described on the menu, but I remember thinking that this one must be a kind of sweet and sour pork, although it didn’t look remotely like traditional gu lo yuk. I selected a piece of meat and placed it in my mouth. Wow! Absolutely delicious. The batter was wonderfully crunchy, and the sauce was, well, sweet and sour. Even the green chilies that came with this dish were packed with flavour.

I did think that we would struggle to finish everything (note how large the two main dishes were):

…but we polished off the lot. Without feeling stuffed!

A footnote: before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, this restaurant was so popular that you would normally have to take a ticket and await your turn when a table became vacant. Paula and I always used to go early to avoid this roadblock, but I took the first photo above just after leaving the restaurant, and there is absolutely no sign of a queue. This state of affairs appears to have affected most eating places in the last three years—the restaurant where we go for yam char (‘drink tea’) used to be crowded but isn’t at present. Whether this is down to natural caution or just not having one’s vaccination record encoded on one’s phone I’m unable to say.

Finally, I thought that I would shoot a short video of the central atrium of the mall from the mezzanine floor outside China Land—I found the constant stream of people on the escalators quite mesmerizing—while I waited for Paula, who had gone to the toilet: