Party at Repulse Bay: Salted Egg Potato Chips, Cocktails and the Idea of Books

I was at Repulse Bay for a birthday party: good conversation in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, canned cocktails and salted egg potato chips, which were addictive as advertised. A translator at the party told me the etymology of the word “Mandarin”: 滿大人 mǎn dà rén, Manchurian official. Mystery solved. We talked about inaccurate transliterations, like “Amoy,” a garbled attempt to import 廈門 xià mén from Mandarin or haa⁶ mun⁴ from Cantonese.

It started to rain late afternoon. I was sorry to leave, though I knew I would see the birthday boy and some of the guests again at the weekly poetry open mic in Central. As we were saying goodbye, I saw a slim Asian woman in the water. In the Bay Area, I tell people I don’t swim in cold water because I don’t have much upper body fat. This woman was there just to prove me wrong. I have no excuse.

A few months ago, I came to Repulse Bay with my mom. We couldn’t find wheelchair access to the beach from the bus stop. I hope to come back with her–without the wheelchair. She would like this sculpture :

Eileen Chang’s Chinese name 張愛玲 is on every book. As a writer, I would have wanted to see many different titles. This sculpture might be more about the idea of books, popular books. On the beach, a woman from Inner Mongolia who had a masters degree in literature told me she had been reading Siddartha in Chinese. Now that’s a book I would’ve liked to see in this stack: