This is the moment I had been waiting for ever since the last time I got to Hong Kong and realized I was going to be too sick to eat or drink anything the whole time I was there. After the Star Ferry, Gang shi nai cha (or however you say it in Cantonese) might be my favorite thing in the city. I try to fake a cup or three every morning at home, with oversteeped Lipton teabags and canned condensed milk*, even though the home version is about as convincing as sitting in a washtub in the bathtub while pretending I'm riding the Twinkling Star across Victoria Harbor.
Luckily I got a slab of toast and jam to distract Mack from any attempt to drink what Daddy was drinking.
The guys in the restaurant were using Lipton, too, but with a very different teabag-concept.
Anyway, I don't seem to be able to pitch any editors successfully on the subject of Hong Kong milk tea, which is a pity. I love the stuff, and I was making chai in a saucepan back when the only place you could get a cup of chai was at an Indian restaurant, but I don't have any reason to suppose that my enthusiasm for Gang shi nai cha will turn out to be similarly predictive or anticipatory of mass-market popularity. So there's no "peg" or anything. Write what you love, my eye.
*It's supposed to be evaporated milk, or evaporated plus condensed, but using the evaporated I could get in Beijing made it come out even further off-target.
