Visit to Cousin Kunlam's Jade Store

When you have a very large extended family, the meaning of the word "cousin" begins to obscure. You find that this word is too general to truly capture the relationships between relatives. My "cousin" Kunlam is really more like my uncle, as he is just a few years younger than my dad and has kids that are my age (much like my other "cousin" from the previous post). Kunlam picked us up from the subway and brought us to his jade shop near the center of the city.

We went inside and down to his meeting room to talk, drink, and eat. We ordered Japanese food from a take-out place and feasted on sashimi and various pickled foods. Kunlam's wife brought a tofu cabbage salad and fried octopus salad down for us. The octopus had lots of cilantro, garlic, and chili pepper and was delicious.












We split a big bottle of Taiwan Beer, which is a lot like Heineken. In my experience, most of the beers in Asia are lagers: Tsing Tao, Tiger Beer, Singha, Sapporo.

After dinner, Kunlam drove us back home and we stayed up late talking (well, everyone else was talking, I was just kind of nodding). Dad played with Albert's baby; he loves playing with babies. All right . . . off to bed!