A Chinese Waiter

“I want to change, but how? I’m tired of this job every day. I do it now almost twenty year.”

Tom Yu has hustled moo shu pork in more than ten dozen Chinese restaurants: could be you’ve seen all ten dozen of him. American eyes confer a patronizing anonymity on the Chinese. It isn’t intended: it’s just that our optical wiring will look for emphasis and hardsell in the human face: mustache or mascara or Palm Beach tan. But an Oriental face, like Oriental speech, expresses itself by deft inflection. Tommy Yu is forbearing: patient with the Caucasian’s Charlie Chan Number One Son style of address: Bring-Glass-Water-Here-Please-Soon-Yes? As if staccato firmness were a kind of sufficient translation. Even though Tommy can handle idiomatic English well enough (and Cantonese and Shanghai and Mandarin and some Spanish)—even though, he might guess what his fortune cookie will say without having to crack its pasteboard husk: TOUGH EGG ROLL, FRIEND. YOU’LL BE HUMPING WONTON WHEN YOU’RE SIXTY.