Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

The following was published in the Sunday Times on 7 September 2008:
Sunday Times 7 September 2008
Invasion of the Hungry Laowai
by Colin Goh

Lately, a peculiar sight has cropped up on the main street in my neighbourhood – groups of bewildered-looking ang mohs hunched over well-creased computer printouts, occasionally looking up and squinting.

As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, the Wife and I moved last year to Flushing, New York’s biggest Chinese neighbourhood.  The food was a major reason.  (Look, we’re still Singaporeans, okay?)

In Flushing, there’s little of that generic crap fried in gloopy and/or cloyingly sweet sauce that most Americans associate with ‘Chinese’ food. Here, you can find xiaolong bao that rival Din Tai Fung’s, or tongue-tingling chuanr from Xinjiang, and even the only place in the whole of New York that serves prata tissue.

New Yorkers are some of the world’s biggest foodies, willing to travel great distances to try new eats.  (They’re certainly unlike the vast majority of Americans I’ve met, who consider tofu “exotic”.) So these printout-clutching strangers reminded me of Singaporeans, especially when we’re circling some ulu industrial park in Tuas, looking for that sambal crab mee goreng place that Auntie Poh Neo’s sister’s brother-in-law’s cousin’s wife recommended.

The printout in question was the New York Times’ dining section’s ‘List of 20 Great Things To Eat in Flushing, Queens’, the web version of which even comes with an audio pronunciation guide.

The first indication that figurative barbarians were at our gate was when the Wife and I were tucking into jiaozi (boiled dumplings) at one of our regular haunts, a small stall run by several aunties from Jilin, on China’s border with North Korea.

“What’s going on?” snorted one auntie. “There are so many laowai today, and they’re all carrying this piece of paper!” (I’m always amused by how Chinese people refer to non-Chinese as ‘laowai’ – a term that literally means ‘old foreigner’ – even when they’re the actual foreigners in that country.)

Coincidentally, some friends from the Midwest came to visit us that weekend, and – surprise! – they too brandished a printout, and asked if we’d lead them down the list.

It was a surreal experience.  All along the main street, sprinkled amongst the usual throng of Asian faces would be these clusters of Caucasian makan tourists. I felt like the neighbourhood had become some sort of Chinese food-themed theme park.

Our first stop was a collection of food stalls in the basement of a mall that reminded me of a really, really cramped version of the eateries on the top floor of Far East Plaza circa 1984. All the stallholders seemed mystified by the onslaught of laowai, except one bright guy who must’ve been tipped off, because he’d taped the article to his window, circled the items recommended by the critic (a cumin-seasoned lamb sandwich, and liángpír, a spicy cold kway teow dish from Xi’an), and was dishing them out to the arrivals without them even having to order. A pity: I’d love to hear a laowai try to pronounce “liángpír”.

We continued on the trail, ticking off places as we went. Along the way, I was stopped at least four times by lost foodies, needing directions to the next stop, as many of the eateries were holes-in-the-wall with no signs in English.

Our guests really enjoyed this ‘food crawl’ and I thought it must be really great for the Flushing food vendors, their business booming because of the exposure.

But many of the stallholders we spoke to begged to differ.  To them, these tourists, mostly Manhattanites, were just here on a one-off exotic adventure, and were unlikely to become regular customers, because trekking out to Flushing is too leceh.

Meanwhile, they weren’t really seeing a surge in takings either. On the contrary, some reported a slowdown because the laowai would come in groups and hog entire tables, but only order a single portion of the recommended dish for all to share, before heading to the next stop.  “Ma fan,” grumbled one vendor. “Troublesome.”

At first, I thought, that’s too short-sighted; perhaps over time, this will cement Flushing as a culinary destination and everyone will benefit.  On the other hand, I feared that if the laowai came in larger numbers, eateries might be tempted to cater more to their palates in order to earn their cash, just as in Manhattan, which has few authentic Chinese restaurants any more. We Singaporeans know too well how our favourite makan places often lose a certain je ne sais quoi once they start to go upmarket.

So when you have a favourite eatery, would you publicise it, or keep it a secret?  I don’t know. I’ll have to chew on this… and I better do it before some laowai turns up.

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