Long-life noodles

I was six years old when my grandfather turned sixty. At the time I was far too young to know that I was really only five years old, as a Chinese baby is deemed to be one-year-old already on the day it is born.

In the See Yup province of Southern China where I came from, birthday parties were as rare and as exotic as the little songbirds that accompanied the old men on their Sunday morning business and gossip sessions.

Once a child’s ‘coming’ out birthday party is held, a month after his birth, he has to wait sixty years for his next birthday party, by which time he will have gathered enough wisdom and knowledge and respect to be worthy of such a celebration.