The clatter and cacophony of the yum cha restaurant was a symphony I’d known since childhood, a familiar chaos of rattling trolley wheels, the sharp clink of porcelain, and the layered hum of a hundred overlapping conversations. It was a sound that felt like home, and today, it was the backdrop for a peculiar kind of trial. My parents, seated across the round table with its crisp white cloth, were the judges, and Darcy, sitting awkwardly beside me, was the willing, if unskilled, contestant.
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He had, with a bright, earnest smile that somehow managed to be both confident and self-deprecating, secured us a table—no small feat in the Saturday morning rush. Now, he sat poised before his bowl, chopsticks held in a grip that was less traditional and more… inventive. It was a hybrid technique, a clumsy fist that promised imminent disaster.
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“A gentleman should at least be able to use chopsticks well,” my father remarked, not unkindly, as he deftly plucked a har gow from the steaming basket a waitress had just deposited at our table. It was a statement of fact, a fundamental law of the universe in his mind.
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Darcy smiled, a little sheepishly. “It’s a skill I’ve yet to master, Uncle.”
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He then attempted to follow my father’s example. He targeted a plump, delicate shrimp dumpling. His chopsticks descended, pinched, and lifted. For a glorious second, the dumpling was airborne. Then, it wobbled, a translucent parcel of impending doom, before slipping from its silken prison and plummeting back into the basket with a soft, tragic plop.
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Undeterred, he tried again. This time, the har gow made it as far as the midpoint between the basket and his bowl before executing a perfect swan dive onto the tablecloth, leaving a small, greasy stain as its epitaph.
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My mother watched, her expression a masterpiece of polite containment. I felt a hot flush of secondhand embarrassment creep up my neck.
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“Do you know how to distinguish true siu mei?” my father asked, perhaps trying to shift the focus from Darcy’s manual incompetence to a more theoretical plane.
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Oh shit, he’s going to start, I thought, a familiar dread settling in. My father’s culinary dissertations could last for courses.
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But it was Darcy who responded, his eyes lighting up. “A good shrimp dumpling,” he began, his voice taking on a lecturer’s clarity, “must first be shaped and firm, resembling a gold ingot, with a precise 10 to 13 folds. Secondly, the wrapper is crucial. It must be smooth, shiny, and slightly translucent, like fine jade. Its texture hinges on three key criteria: softness, firmness—that’s the chewiness—and, of course, transparency.”
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He delivered this not with boastfulness, but with the reverent tone of a scholar quoting a sacred text. The effect was jarring. The man who couldn’t physically transport a dumpling three inches could describe its soul with the precision of a master chef.
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My parents were visibly impressed. My father nodded slowly, a genuine smile gracing his lips. My mother’s restrained expression melted into one of warm approval.
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“Bauhinia,” my mother said, turning to me, “you could help this gentleman and serve him, since he's sitting next to you.”
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The instruction was gentle, but the subtext was clear: Fix this. Make it presentable. I felt a prickle of annoyance. I wasn’t his keeper. But I reached over with my own chopsticks, skillfully snagging the most perfect har gow from the basket and depositing it neatly into his bowl.
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“What a gentleman!” my father exclaimed, beaming at Darcy now. “To know the history and artistry of the foods we eat. This is rare in young people today.”
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Darcy gave a slight, humble bow of his head. “Such is the life education I received.”
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The conversation, having successfully navigated away from the chopstick debacle, turned to more personal waters.
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“Where did you grow up, Darcy?” my mother asked, pouring him more pu-erh tea.
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“I was living with my relatives overseas for a time,” he said, his voice measured. “And in high school, I was in a home stay with a host family in Australia.”
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“Ah!” my father said, as if a great mystery had been solved. “No wonder you have such good manners.”
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Darcy nodded. “The weather was upside down over there. And… I spent more time with my home stay families than my real family. I learned to fit in and be on my best behaviour.” He paused, his gaze drifting for a moment, seeing a different place, a different time. “They were generally kind, but I got to see they had to struggle for a living. It was not an easy life for them.”
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He took a small sip of tea, the ceramic cup looking delicate in his hand. “For example, they had a grandmother who had breast cancer. The family struggled to keep their lives together. I remember the medication and the needles… they were so expensive. You could see the stress on their faces every month when the new bills came.”
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The table fell quiet. The noisy backdrop of the restaurant seemed to fade for a moment. This wasn't the polished, food-theory Darcy, or the clumsy-chopsticks Darcy. This was someone who had seen the cracks in the world up close. My parents’ faces softened with a shared, sympathetic understanding. They knew about struggle.
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“What are you studying now?” my father asked, his tone more gentle.
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“I am doing accounting at City U,” Darcy said, “with Bauhinia.”
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“And we are classmates in the marketing classes,” I added, feeling the need to reassert my presence in my own life story.
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My mother looked from Darcy to me and back again, her eyes alight with a new, appraising light. “Such a rich, well-mannered boy,” she said, and I cringed internally at the word ‘rich,’ though she meant it in the broadest sense. “You can tell even when his surroundings are totally humble. He embodies the ideal state of staying healthy also, and only eating until seventy percent full.”
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Darcy had, indeed, eaten sparingly, sampling each dish with thoughtful appreciation rather than ravenous hunger. He was a picture of moderation, a stark contrast to my own lifelong habit of eating until I was uncomfortably full, as if every meal might be my last.
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Then came the pivot, the inevitable turn that every conversation with my parents eventually took when it concerned me.
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“I wished you could teach our Bauhinia some things about not procrastinating,” my mother said to Darcy, as if I had suddenly vanished from the table. “It seems all her life is used up procrastinating. She puts everything off until the last minute.”
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The heat returned to my face, this time a flush of pure indignation. My flaws, laid bare before the well-mannered, non-procrastinating, chopstick-inept but spiritually-enlightened Darcy.
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“It’s not like that, Mom,” I protested, my voice tighter than I intended. “It’s just that I dread doing work. The dread is… bigger than the work itself.”
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It was a feeble defense, and I knew it. My mother simply gave me a look that said, See? Even your excuses are procrastinated.
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Darcy, to his credit, did not offer me a condescending smile or a platitude. He simply looked at me, and for a brief moment, I saw not pity, but a flicker of recognition. He didn’t say, “I’ll help her,” which would have made me want to vanish through the floor. He just gave a small, thoughtful nod, as if filing the information away.
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The rest of the yum cha proceeded smoothly. My father and Darcy discussed the merits of different teas, my mother recommended other dishes, and I mostly stayed quiet, stewing in a mixture of irritation and a strange, reluctant admiration. Darcy was a walking contradiction. He was clumsy yet refined; he was an outsider who understood the soul of a shrimp dumpling better than I ever would; he spoke of profound family struggles with a quiet dignity that commanded respect, while I was being scolded for putting off my marketing assignment.
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As we stood to leave, my father clapped Darcy on the shoulder. “You must come again. It was a pleasure.”
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Outside, the bright Hong Kong sun felt harsh after the soft, food-hazed interior of the restaurant. We walked in silence for a block before Darcy spoke.
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“Your parents are nice,” he said.
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“They were on their best behaviour for you,” I retorted, the sting of the procrastination comment still fresh. “The ‘rich, well-mannered boy’.”
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He stopped walking and turned to me, his face serious. “Bauhinia, I wasn’t being humble in there. When I talked about my host family… that’s why I’m studying accounting. It’s not poetic. It’s not about the soul. It’s about knowing how much things cost, and how to make the numbers add up so people don’t have to choose between medicine and food. It’s the opposite of procrastination. It’s preparing for a fight I know is coming.”
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I looked at him, truly looked at him. The toothpaste stain was still on his jacket. His hands, which fumbled with chopsticks, were clenched slightly at his sides. He wasn’t just a boy with good manners and weirdly specific food knowledge. He was a boy building a fortress of practicality against the chaos he’d witnessed. My dread of starting a marketing report felt laughably small in comparison.
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“I know,” I said quietly. “And I’m sorry my mom… you know.”
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He grinned, the seriousness evaporating. “It’s okay. Maybe I can teach you my ways. Step one: only eat until you’re seventy percent full. It leaves room for dessert.”
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He pointed to a nearby dai pai dong selling egg waffles. And in that moment, surrounded by the relentless energy of the city, with the smell of soy sauce and traffic fumes in the air, I felt the knot of my annoyance finally loosen. He was clumsy, he was preachy, and he was, inexplicably, my friend. And perhaps, in his own upside-down way, he was exactly the kind of life education I needed.
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and then Add to home screen.