When I am lost in the dark, sometimes I go faster and make
lots of noise. Or, in the inverse of what American novelist E.L. Doctorow
recommends, I drive beyond the high-beams.
So it was in the closet-like kitchen of Beijing Dim Sim Food Pty Ltd (51 Adderton
Road, Telopea, NSW, Australia), which I basically crashed into earlier this
week.
A very large and bearded white man being ever more exuberant
and hyper-curious, as five Chinese dumpling makers went about their gentle trade of making gow-gee, dim sim, shallot pancakes, spring
rolls, and pork buns.
When you point with your chopsticks (and show really bad
form) at the cart rolling past at a some crowded yum-cha palace in western Sydney on a
Sunday morning, it’s likely that you have Annie to thank for the magnificent
morsels that come your way.
Since 1997, her Telopea-based, dumpling-making shop-front factory
supplies dozens of Chinese restaurants and Asian grocery stores. Looking like
snowballs in a Glad bag, some retail dumplings are also sold out the front.
To
get my admission into the kitchen, I bought a bag of fish-filling gow-gee and a
bag of pork-and-cabbage gow-gee; the latter are Annie’s best seller.
“30 per cent pork. 70 per cent cabbage. Salt and pepper.
Little bit soy sauce. Very healthy. People want very healthy,” Annie tells me.
I am glad that something healthy, nourishing and profitable
comes from a hard heart. Not Annie’s – Telopea’s.
If Telopea doesn’t mean ‘lonely ass place’ in an Aboriginal
dialect, maybe it should. Housing
Commission blocks like mouldy loaves of bread. Tree trunks covered in graffiti. Junk mail
from Kmart blowing across the tracks of the train that comes through only once
an hour.
I’m riffing with all this in Annie's kitchen - which means I’m really
anywhere but the kitchen. So, what comes out are ever louder and stupider
questions. “So what’s the Mandarin for rolling pin?”
I somehow squeeze through to near the best dumpling maker –
2000 plus per day. Roll, palm, place, seal. The whole action in under 5 seconds.
Each dumpling identically formed and plump and resting in neat rows on a metal tray dusted with flour.
She’s so calm and smiling. With no English, just flicks of
fingers as she continues packing her parcels, I’m invited to settle and watch.
But,
I’m still caught in my mental beach rip about how much Telopea sucks. Then, the
migration status of Annie’s employees. Then, why are migrants blowing things up in Boston and I hope my cousin and her family are safe...
The good old monkey mind basically pushes the button for the
ejection seat and I hurriedly leave the Beijing Dim Sim Food Pty Ltd shop in Telopea.
The guy who runs the local grog shop next door smokes out the front and flicks
the fag in the gutter as he sees me.
The soundtrack in my head is saying: “Wow, you really are an
enormous dickhead.”
Then, an old Chinese man comes walking down the street. He’s
got a portable speaker slung over his Lowes tracksuit top and it’s pumping out
what I make out to be an exercise routine. There’s the screech of Chinese
violin and a sergeant-like narrator barking orders by which to flap arms and
lift legs.
He stops at the cross-walk and smiles when I ask for a
photo. The pause button on my mad world is pushed. Stuff just gets calm and centred.
“Stop, revive, survive,” I am reminded of a lesson part of
me just doesn’t seem to learn. Maybe, I need to go make 2000 dumplings.
