The Chinese are coming

During the early twentieth century, the Chinese were one of the largest immigrant groups in Mexico, particularly in the North, where they had great success as merchants. Unfortunately, their accomplishment was followed by an anti-Chinese movement, which included racist legislation and even some incidents of riots, desecration of property, and jailing of Chinese for no reason. This monolithic timepiece, on Calle Bucareli in the Colonia Juarez in Mexico City, is known as "the Chinese clock." It is a replica of one that was given as a gift to the Mexican people by the Emperor of China in 1910, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.  Anti-Chinese hooligans destroyed it in 1913. The replacement was set in its place in 1921.

Jose Luis Bárcenas, the immigration lawyer who arranged all my paperwork in Mexico, tells me that in recent years, once again the Chinese are among the fastest-rising groups of immigrants in the city. The D.F.'s Chinatown is only one block long, but the Chinese are scattered throughout the entire city.

Their emergence has heralded a preponderance of restaurants featuring ultra-greasy Chinese buffets where, at your own peril you can serve yourself all you can eat for about sixty pesos (less than five dollars at the current exchange rate). These places are perhaps a form of revenge for the earlier anti-Chinese movement. Click here for an earlier post about the best Chinese restaurant in Mexico City.

Still more sign language

In New York, on Clinton Street, a stone’s throw from the Williamsburg Bridge, I saw this advertisement. According to the way the sign is phrased, doesn’t it appear that they will sell you one shoe and then, as a big favor, let you have the other half of the pair at a fifty per cent discount?

Then I saw this other sign -- the one on the right. I grant you that it probably is a testament to my perverse imagination, but when I read it, I pictured someone with her pants halfway on and halfway off.

Spitting on white boys

He calls himself "The Legend," and says he has been shining shoes on Jackson Square in the French Quarter for 32 years. He tends to attract customers with discreet remarks like, "Either you're going to come to me now or you're going to come to me later," or by shouting lines like, "Free beer, free shoeshines, free bullshit." He finishes with what is traditionally known as a "spit shine," in which he lets loose with a projectile of saliva onto the leather, which leaves the shoe -- as indicated here -- brilliantly shiny. "This is the only time I get to spit on white boys," he told me as he was completing the endeavor. "And they like it, too." Only the bullshit is free. The Legend charges six dollars per shine, and before the customer pays, he reminds him that "Tips is my middle name."

Bottoms up

In the last year, I have passed through so many airports that I don't remember in which one I took this photograph. I was making my way to a connecting flight -- it was probably in Texas.

Of course her image has adorned refrigerator magnets, coffee mugs and the like for years. After all that, I don't know why this come-on for a cocktail struck me as particularly vulgar. Do you think she's spinning in her grave?

Goodnight sweet prince

Phil Kelly died on Monday. An Irishman who arrived in Mexico City in the early 1980s, he looked at the city assiduously, and through sheer powers of observation, made it his own. No one who wrote about Mexico City influenced me as much as Phil's painting did. I venture to guess that if I had never met Phil, I may never have written my books about Mexico. In my book Las llaves de la ciudad, there is a long profile about him. Here is a link to an earlier post about him.

Apart from being a brilliant painter, Phil read in three languages, and had a huge store of literary references in the recesses of his brain. There is a dish served in Mexico called chamorro. It's pork shank -- basically the whole calf on the bone. Once, we were in a cantina and I ordered the chamorro. When it arrived, it was enormous, a huge piece of meat. Phil looked at it and said, "Chamorro and chamorro and chamorro."

Many of us will miss him.