Eat Your Dumpling or Pow Pow!

I’m reading “The Dim Sum of All Things” and it’s such a hilarious novel! The heroine is almost as wacky as Bridget Jones herself except she’s not as pathetic. Or maybe she is but has had fewer mishaps interfere with her “inner poise” (Bridget’s unattainable goal).

They both are, however, prone to doing desperately obsessive things when it comes to men. It’s refreshing that authors are being truthful about this sort of thing. I’m sick of the Scarlet O’Hara’s of the world who have men panting all over them and they get to be aloof and picky. Anyone who can pull off wearing a curtain for a dress does NOT get my sympathy!

“Dim Sum’s” Lindsey Owyang is a Chinese-American who lives in San Francisco (que’l surprise!) and is wary of “greige” men, or white guys who wear beige and gray and are nerds and Hoarders of All Things Asian. They hound her on the bus and want to go out with her because they can’t wait to have her walking on their backs with her tiny Chinese feet or serving them bowls of Chow Mein. Still, she does prefer white men apparently and is obsessed/in love with her co-worker Michael.

Like Bridget Jones who would spend hours obsessing over her loves and dialing 1472 (in England they use this to see who’s called you last, like * 69) a hundred times a day to see if she’s missed their calls while in the loo or talking to her crazy mother (doesn’t she have call waiting?), Lindsey steals pens from Michael’s desk and stalks him outside his apartment with binoculars to get a look at the girl who left a message at the office saying she’d meet him there at seven.

An added bonus to “Dim Sum” is its Asianess. I mean, I adore Amy Tan’s books and the Chinese culture fascinates me. The foods sound delicious (and it’s all real, nothing you can get at the local Panda Express) and the grandmothers are hilarious. Actually, the name for grandmother, Pau Pau, reminds me of my own paternal grandma as she’d always threaten to give me “pow-pow!” when I didn’t behave. In fact, she’d just look at you and say, “Pow pow!” and you knew you’d better stop whatever it was you were doing.
But Lindsey’s Pau Pau smells like Chinese herbs and Tiger Balm. That’s neat.

I bought Tiger Balm the other day and put it on but Nick said I smelled like a sixty-five-year-old. Happy Birthday, Nick!