The Dragon In Decline

I still remember the Chinese family that used to run a laundry on the ground floor of our building in south Kolkata when I was a child.

- Nirmalya Banerjee

They were our tenants. Occasionally, they would send us cooked noodles for dinner. That was my first taste of chow mein, the popular name for stir-fried noodles. The ubiquitous Chinese restaurants dotting the city were quite a distance away. Only a few famed ones had been in business serving as the city landmarks: Nanking, Chang Wah, and Peiping. Going to Peiping in Park Street for dinner would be an occasion. Chang Wah on Central Avenue and Nanking in Tiretta Bazaar, deep inside the city’s Chinatown, were beyond our horizon. Somehow, those areas were not considered safe enough. I don’t know why; maybe the storylines of the old blockbusters such as China Town and Howrah Bridge had perpetuated a myth.