This is a picture of medicinal broth ingredients I took in Hong Kong on my last visit, maybe four years ago. The roots, cocoons, flowerbuds and balletically arranged frogs were displayed outside one of the many shops here that specialize in yucky things you add to chicken broth to give you a variety of superpowers.

It has occurred to me, after eight years away from and one morning back in Hong Kong, that this city will never again be my home. It’s been a hard year in New York and I was toying with the idea of coming back here. It didn’t take long, though–all of three hours?–for the Chinese signs I can’t read and the humidity that plasters my long hair to my neck and back to deliver an abrupt but deeply resonant reality check: what am I doing here? Hong Kong combines the pace of Times Square with the climate of the islands. I am sweaty and irritable, too tall to buy shoes and clothes, constantly on display (it’s one of the most cosmopolitan cities on earth, but Hong Kong loves to stare at Eurasians)…and I miss Brooklyn already.

I don’t know if it’s the craziness of the past week or the stifling humidity, but my appetite is gone. I had imagined a joyful reunion with the flavours of my childhood: Chinese food without sugar, dashi with actual bonito flakes (instead of the vegetarian-friendly kombu water that has flavoured every dire bowl of miso soup I’ve had in my three years in New York: an old and probably tedious complaint of mine), maybe even some “soup dumplings”. (Can I take a moment to note that the coarse meat balloons they love to flog in Chinatown have nothing to do with xiao long bao? If you have to eat these greasy, artless things, please at least ignore the bizarre instructions they sometimes print on the menu, urging diners to bite a hole in the dumpling skin and suck out the juices before eating the rest of it. What are we, pork vampires? Gross.) So far, though, I’ve only had a latte from Starbucks (mea culpa) and wandered the food markets in Causeway Bay, taking pictures of flamboyantly patterned whelks, questionable meat display habits and, most memorably, an entire bull’s tail with testicles intact. I’ll get around to posting these pictures eventually, but I’m on a borrowed computer with limited resources.

I’ll be here for a few days yet, and once I start eating, this blog will be the first to know.

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