The Wild Wild (North) West

People here work hard. She's spent all day tying up crabs with strands of weeds. They'll be sold to restaurants for steaming.

Spent the day in Sham Shui Po, and Hong Kong rose a bit on my favorite-cities list. This part of Kowloon has a Third Worldy vibe ― it's by far the poorest area of the city I've visited, and at times it feels as if something invisibly coiled in the shadows is ready to bite. But in the end, as in the rest of Hong Kong, everybody just seems to indifferently coexist, and commerce is king.

"Ghetto" is a bit strong. I just view it as a rowdy part of town with a few dodgy characters.

After a few hours I began to see Sham Shui Po as a big-box store, with streets serving as the aisles. One street specializes in metal buttons, another in plastic bags by bulk. Batteries and SIM cards down that avenue, plumbing fixtures thataway, and gray-market phones are two aisles down, take a right.

Hong Kong has to be one of the safest big cities in the world, but it only takes one white-haired guy to ruin your day.

This English-speaking lady is reporting a theft to police. She gave them quite a good description: a stooped man with white hair and a pronounced limp. The cops listened intently, taking notes. What happened then surprised me: They got on their radios and networked with other police in the area, then went looking for the culprit. In my hometown you would be asked to fill out a report online, and that would be the end of it. A shout-out to the Sham Shui Po po-po!

Haggling over a cheap jade bracelet.

Hardware store. He knows where everything is.

A lot of rural Chinese who have settled in Sham Shui Po make their living selling secondhand goods.

When the neon lights start to turn on around 6, I turn up an alleyway and plop down indiscriminately in the first plastic red chair I see. I smell propane, and that means food can't be far behind. I am handed a menu without pictures, all in Cantonese. This will not be a problem ― I am in that vacation sweet spot in which I don't care what other people think and am confident everything will turn out for the best.

Ironically, half the phrases I have learned involve cursory announcements that I can neither speak nor understand Cantonese.

My waitress seems happy to see me. I probe to see where our territories might overlap.

"Shrimp?"

She cocks her head and smiles.

"Beef?"

No response.

"Pork then!" Surely there will be pork.

She looks at me steadily, waiting for the next volley.

"Chicken?"

A glimmer of recognition, and that's all we need. I vigorously nod twice and repeat the word "chicken" while handing her the menu. "And a San Miguel." I know she'll get this ― the Filipino beer seems to be the most popular lager here.

And that's that. I see my chef down the alley working over a hot wok, a cigarette in his mouth. Smiley Girl brings me a 22-ounce San Miguel without a glass.

Cantonese food isn't spicy, but it has well-balanced flavors. I probably underappreciate its, uh, refinements.

It's a good meal, a bit much for one person. Happily, the chicken is cleaved into 1-inch pieces with the bone in. This is real country shit. The meat stays more moist when the bone is left in, and it is simply more fun to eat chicken with your hands than with chopsticks or a fork. It's 5 a.m. in D.C., but I text McClatchy's Jim Rosen to report my good fortune. We spent a year and a half in Eureka chopping chicken, ribs and duck into 1-inch pieces in our quest to cook everything in the late San Francisco chef Henry Chung's cookbook. They were nice times. I haven't seen a fork in six days.

Garlic, ginger, green pepper, scallions ― pretty similar to the ingredients found in "American" Chinese food.

Nothing can burst this bubble. Secure and cozy on my red plastic stool, I down the last of my beer and let out the biggest belch of my life. It's been a good day.