"Tai Ping San Hai"
This episode --- Pui Ching Pui Ching ho kwong wing

ual55

There is this out of the place" Cha chang ting" in this north of the Mexican border town. CCT is a kind of HK tea house (for milk tea) that is typical of our favorite hangout joints such as Mei-Lin.

CCTs come and go in this little town for years, there is never a large following and eventually lead to their demise. But this CCT is still around after three years in business, due to their lunch time crowd from local office workers, mostly non-Asians. The waitresses are college girls from China, and one from HK, all speak very reasonable Cantonese.

My favorites at this CCT include Borsch soup, baked porkchop rice, curry beef rice, minced beef rice with sunny side up egg, beef tongue, and of course milk tea. They also serve more traditional Chinese food and Thai food. Of course there are better CCTs in the big city some 150 miles up north, but that is 150 miles away. This CCT will do for now for this Lighter.

One evening shortly after the Lunar New Year, time to visit this CCT again. Sat down and asked for the usual. In came 6 people, one couple apparently came from HK for vacation. They sat down, the hosting couple provided two home-grown avocados, and asked the chef to prepare something special for them.

They started talking. This is generally a fairly quiet tea house, so their conversion in Cantonese became quite clear even they were not particularly loud. The wife of the visiting couple is apparently the vice principal of a HK school, although not clear to this eavesdropper if it was a high school or an elementary school.

They talked about HK schooling, from higher education to middle schools. The wife was apparently quite knowledgeable, although not entirely accurate on the tenure system and the length of contracts for tertiary education faculty.

Then the conversation turned to HK middle schools. One person asked about the Queens college, the kings, etc, even the Elizabeth. Well, this PCer and Lighter now sat on the edge, shifting side to side. They did not know what they were talking about. These guys did not know better what to ask.

Then all of a sudden one person, quite certain not a PCer, asked about PC, was it doing well ? This Lighter held his breath, and held his breath, stretching to listen...

And the vice principal said " PC has ALWAYS been a ming-how (something equivalent to a famous school, but may have its own HK meaning in this term)."

This statement made my day. And this lighter felt PC has been vindicated, after years and years of being treated by the HK government and the residents of HK to be less than what it really deserved. It is the school, the teachers, the PCers and the Red and Blue spirit that made PC to be accepted as a Ming How, in a society still full of colonial viewpoints and tradition. In our hearts we have always known that PC is the GREATEST, of course.

Pui Ching Pui Ching Ho kwong wing......It is the following line that we, PCers and Lighters, must cherish, and remember the deeds of all the founding fathers and builders of our beloved PC dated back more than 100 years ago.