When the fog in the display case frosted on the glass at minus three degrees, my Belgian boss complained for the 27th time about the cash register system: “Xu, how does the QR code payment work back in your hometown?” I opened my mouth, that phrase “Actually, we can pay with facial recognition at street stalls” stuck in my throat, turning into the muffled sound of wiping the POS machine.
This “Longmai Dumpling House,” located next to the EU headquarters, has to explain the pronunciation difference between chives and celery twelve times a day. Until last Wednesday before closing, an elderly lady in a mink coat pointed at the print of “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” on the wall and exclaimed, “Darling, you’ve turned the TikTok popular challenge into a mural?”
On her phone screen, the topic #Revival of Northern Song Aesthetics# was going viral. As I stared at the familiar Kaifeng Hongqiao pattern on the topic page, I suddenly discovered that the decorative painting we had hung for three years had a hidden half of a netizen's second creation of the “Song Dynasty Delivery Guy” — a rider in a narrow-sleeved round-neck robe holding a carved food box, with a light yellow flag reading “Waiting for you at the state bridge in the wind and rain” stuck in the electric scooter.
“Is this... your new internet celebrity store marketing in China?” The lady’s blue eyes scanned back and forth between the topic page and the wall. I clutched the rag and fled in panic, using my frozen fingers to open a three-year-old Weibo account in the alley.
The private message still lingered in September 2021: “Sister, please help me buy Belgian chocolate!” The latest message, however, was from three days ago: “Where is that dumpling house in Brussels that accepts Alipay?” The accompanying image was our store's wooden sign.
When I typed my store name into the Google search box, the fourth autocomplete suggestion was actually “Brussels Dumpling House Weibo Same Style.” Clicking into a website called Peach Circle, under the entry #National Trend Going Abroad#, our greasy glass display window photo surprisingly ranked alongside the light show of Xi'an's Great Tang All Day Mall!
The next day, the cash register underwent a magical transformation:
- A regular Chinese lawyer pointed at the “Today's Special” board and laughed, “You actually caught up with the domestic pickled vegetable revival trend?” — I then realized my assistant had written the sauerkraut filling as #Northeast Literature#
- An Italian tourist kept taking pictures of the “Snap Cucumber” translation on the QR code ordering page, later I found out they were tracking the tag #Chinese Dish Name Silly English#
- The most astonishing were the EU staff group, who seriously discussed legal documents, suddenly pointing at the corner's pickled garlic jar and asking, “Is this your Little Red Book same style cultural relic?”
Last night after closing, a regular student, Xiao Lu, mysteriously handed me a tablet: “Sister Xu, let me show you a big treasure.” The page was on the website's “Folk Memories” section, descendants of Shanghai expatriates from the 1930s were searching for the baozi shop their ancestors frequented through blurry old photos.
“Your store might be becoming a cyber cultural relic.” She scrolled through images of Chinese restaurants uploaded by users, “Just like the electronic patina of nostalgia.”
This morning, I arrived at the store two hours early and placed the blue-and-white vinegar dish sent by my grandfather in the display case. When I entered “vinegar culture” in the website search box, the automatically associated #What Flows in the Blood of Shanxi People# made me spit out my coffee.
On a foggy afternoon, that elderly lady in the mink coat came again. This time she held a printed page from the website, pointing at the entry #Restoration of Song Dynasty Cuisine# and asked, “Can I reserve this pan-fried lamb intestines from ‘Dreams of Tokyo’?”
Amid the hot steam wafting with the scent of fennel from the kitchen, I heard myself answering in French with a Brussels accent: “Madam, this dish requires a reservation — but you can try our newly trending item first, the jujube paste peony pastry.”