Oakland Chinatown, except for places like Tây Hồ, Bình Minh Quán, and the Korean restaurant on 13th street, carried on its everyday business on Thanksgiving as if it were a town in China. The Chinese dedication is admirable and to be grateful for. Without it I would haven’t had two meals worth of $1.75 wrapped in bamboo leaves. Yes, two meals. Jung, as the lady at Sum Yee Pastry pronounced, is a heavy deal. At first I thought it was a Vietnamese banh gio, except for the leaf wrapper being dried instead of smooth, damp, and waxy. I asked her for the name and couldn’t make out what she was saying, I asked her to write it down but she didn’t know how, she then asked if I was Vietnamese and switched to my mother tongue in her mixed Chinese tongue to explain that this thing is eaten on May 5th just like banh chung is eaten during Tet. Aha, so it’s zong zi, the great great great grandfather of banh u tro! Turns out zong zi (just a different, and much more common, […]

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