Winter 2005

When I return home for winter break, I find a slew of surprises. First, I discover that we’ve downgraded from our one-bedroom basement apartment to a single room on the second floor of a house, sharing a bathroom and kitchen with other tenants. In an effort to cut down on living expenses to fuel the business, my dad has crammed our family and our belongings into a 300-square-foot (28 sq m) room. The only upside: There’s sunlight and cell-phone signal.

The second surprise is the bubble tea shop. Never in any of my phone calls home did he bother to mention that he opened up the shop, that I was expected to help out over the break, and that he had started selling food, too. Which brings us to the most important surprise: the shop’s liang pi. It’s still experimental, still not quite there yet, but still good. It’s my first taste of authentic liang pi in ten years.