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SubTitle: Catered by Ma Fei Mai
Posted by: DAN BLAINE (100.53680@germanynet.de) on 4/24/1998@07:09hrs:
Ma Fei Mai got into the catering business by an unusual set of circumstances:
As a member of an old SI family, he had been groomed since childhood to take over his uncle's job as the head jailer at Richmond County Jail. His grandfather, however demanded that Ma Fei Mai be schooled in the manly art of self defense...it would be necessary to handle some of the unruly prisoners at the jail: notorious desperados like Willie Sutton, Regina X. and Marcene X(as she was known in those days)
Unfortunately, the great boxing era of SI was past. Bantam Murphy, Al Roberts (aka Heidler) and Nate Myerwich had all retired and were not interested in training any young boxers.
Therefore, Ma Fei Mai's granddad sent him up to New Haven, Ct. to learn the classic oriental form of martial arts....Chung King. It was a hard couple of years of training for Ma Fei Mai; he not only had to develop the discipline necessary to master the physical aspects of the sport, he was also expected to learn the Cantonese language so he could study the philosophy to go with it.
Fortunately for Ma Fei Mai, as a SI'der he was also a "boat person" and had spoken Hakka since childhood. This enabled him to understand Cantonese easily....the only problem being with the speaking part of it... he could never overcome his SI induced Hakka accent and was therefore made to work in the kitchen of the "Shoal Inn" when not attending Chung King classes.
One day while working in the kitchen sprinkling Chow Mein noodles on a customer's Chop Suey, the student working next to him accidently poured some hot oil from his Wok on Ma Fei Mai's forearm and burned an imprint of a chow mein noodle on his forearm...this happened frequently at the Shoal Inn, because of the large turnover in kitchen help.
Ma Fei Mai graduated with honors and returned to SI to take over his uncle's sinecure at the jail. But the jail had closed down! After Willie Sutton escaped and the two female defacers of school property were released early, the jail was shut down.
To earn his way, Ma Fei Mai applied at a SI Chinese restaurant, the Jade Pillow run by a haughty Mandarin Chinese named Ming the Merciless. As soon as Ming heard Ma Fei Mei's dialect he said "ch'yuan!"...go back in the kitchen and work in the scullery! Ma Fei Mai swallowed this insult because he needed the job badly.
When he greeted the Cantonese kitchen workers and they also looked down upon him and called him "Khien". Meekly, Ma Fei Mai rolled up his sleeves to tackle the huge pile of dishes that needed to be washed.
When the other workers saw the burn scar in the shape of the chow mein noodle on his forearm, the cried out "Shoal Inn, Shoal Inn!" and fell down in front of him crying in Cantonese: (translated here because this version of HTML doesn't support kwangtang characters)"Not Worthy!, Not Worthy!".
When Ming came back to see what the commotion was, he also fell down and touched his forhead to the ground in front of Ma Fei Mai while crying out: "Shoal Inn, Shoal Inn!...Not Worthy, Not Worthy!"
Ming immediately appointed Ma Fei Mai to head up his catering crew...they had a big order this evening up at Horrman's Castle and he knew that a Shoal Inn graduate would bring honor to his business.
As Ma Fei Mai presented the first menu to Queen Regina, there was some confusion...she wanted to know if she could order 3 from column A and 2 from column B and still get two Won Ton's in her soup.
Ma Fei Mai asked again just to make sure: "You want Won Ton?" "No, I want Two Won Tons", said the Queen. "So, you want Won Ton, too?" said Ma Fei Mai to Old Tymer who was sitting next to the Queen. "No, I want one Won Ton." said Old Tymer. The Queen impolitely interrupted (it was her royal perogative, and she was hungry!) "Wait a minute, I want Won Ton, too but not one Won Ton, two Won Ton!" said the Queen. "Hold it, Queenie, the man was talking to me and I want Won Ton, too but just one Won Ton" said OT.
At this point, luckily for Ma Fei Mai there was a ruckus down at the other end of the dinning hall......