Cha Chaan Teng: Reloaded

There is a drink in Hong Kong called yuanyang, 鸳鸯, which literally means the "mandarin duck" in English. Can you guess what it is? Well, it is concoction of tea and coffee in Hong Kong style. But why coins a drink with a bird's name in the very first place? Because the mandarin duck, being a kind of birds that always goes in pair, has a poetic reflection in Chinese as a pair of couple bathing in the river of love. So Chinese, especially the Cantonese, exercising a lovable level of imagination, often likes to name a cuisine or a drink as yuanyang if two conflicting ingredients inextricably interwoven to become one. Like that of the yuanyang fried rice (fried rice that topped with two different sauces in the Taichi pattern) and this mixture of tea and coffee (interlacing with milk too).

As enigmatic as the yuanyang label, there is also a speical name for the black coffee in these Hong Kong style bistros. It is the tsai fai, which in face value means "veggie coffee" in English. But make no mistake, it doesn't mean there're some vegetables in the coffee nor the coffee is for vegetarians only. No, nothing like that. It is only because in Cantonese dialect, tsai (veggie, that is) is also used to refer to something that is very plain. Hence in this case, it means the coffee with nothing added.

Another much sought after drink in the cha chaan teng is the linlok, which means coke with lemon slices. Funny thing is, in summer it is served like ice lemon tea with ice cubes in the glass but in winter it is served hot (of note, the coke is not boiled but nuked). Believe it or not, it is said that this hottie can soothe your nose when you got a cold.