When I was in China...

When I was in China, I used to grade at a coffee shop named Coffee Language. Our city didn't have a Starbucks, so we found a few places in the city with decent beverages, where we were willing to spend extra time, and which had acceptable bathrooms. Coffee Language had coconut scented black tea, apple scented black tea, and ginger milk tea. The ginger milk tea was a pot of hot milk tea with lots of shredded fresh spicy ginger floating in it.


They had a nice atmosphere: couches instead of booths, windows overlooking the street. They played good music, like Sinatra, Neil Sedaka, and Skeeter Davis, and, even more obscure in China, songs from the 1950's, like 'Rose, Rose, I Love You.'

I graded papers there. I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan there, and I was always one of the few people there, sometimes the only person there. Sitting there, looking down at the street, and drinking ginger milk tea, it made me feel like a poet, and like I wasn't in China for a few hours.

-吴佩芙