The future isn't certain but it's sure delicious

We live near a "no-future" alley, which runs through a vast expanse of "no-future" flat houses and decaying buildings before joining a "no-future" road where pedestrians and vehicles are jammed day in and day out among stalls of construction materials.

About 20 meters before it converges with the road, the alley becomes a valley, with people and cars vying for passage through all sorts of rubbish and tremendous noise.

It is amazing that so many small "no-future" restaurants have mushroomed in such a small place. Some of them even set their breakfast tables into the road, causing furious protests from drivers.

As my wife and I have to go through this alley whenever we hunt for fresh vegetables in the morning market, we have witnessed the ups and downs of the restaurants along the way.

Well, there seems to be no "ups". Most of the restaurants are always empty, except for the sorrowful owners who squat at the doorway, smoking the cigarettes and lamenting their unwise decision to take such a doomed place for business.

Among them, the one with the least future has been sold numerous times. From spicy pancakes to Chengdu snacks, then steamed stuffed bun of Hangzhou and fried fish of Chongqing, none of them had a prosperous business.

Recently, we found the restaurant reopened again. This time, it is snacks from Shaxian County of Fujian Province.

My wife and I sneered at it, thinking it was a fake, just like the so-called Chengdu snacks in Beijing are actually run by people of the same village in Wanzhou District of Chongqing.

But we soon found that the restaurant doesn't look "no-future" any more. Among the dusty and hapless eateries, this one even shines with the beauty of a country girl. It seems to be drawing an increasing number of customers. In a few days, at lunch or dinnertime, people have to queue up to get a seat. We've never seen this before.

My wife and I decided to give it a try before the restaurant closes down like its predecessors. An honest-looking couple greet us with warm smiles. Their accent seems to prove that they indeed came from Shaxian. The menu proved our guess: noodles, steamed jiaozi dumpling and other special dishes that Shaxian is famous for.

To give it a real test, we ordered bianrou (literally, flat meat), a strange name that the Fujian people give to hundun dumpling.

When the dish came, we couldn't help praising it: crispy wrapping, tender meat and a light fragrance of danggui (Chinese angelica, a medicinal herb) in the soup.

We kindly reminded the proprietress of the area's no-future history. She smiled: "Don't worry, we've been through much worse times. We people from Shaxian can endure any hardships and we honor honesty.

"We have a local saying: 'Bianrou is our cement, noodle is our reinforcing steel bar.' However bad a place may be, we will make our Shaxian snack enjoyable for our customers!"

(China Daily 09/04/2007 page20)