Morning Coffee: Tao Dan Park

I knew I would like Ho Chi Minh City the minute I had my first cup of coffee. Any city where it’s normal to take a leisurely mid-morning coffee break is fine by me — especially when those coffee breaks take place with birdcages and newspapers in a public park.

Last year, I wrote about the coffee-on-demand service available in one Saigon park, but the city’s parks are home to more conventional cafés, too. One year ago, on a sunny morning in early February, I found myself sitting with two friends in Tao Dan Park, on the west side of the city’s colonial centre, where a concrete terrace is filled with low plastic chairs. We sat and ordered two iced milk coffees and one hot black coffee from a woman who wandered over from a small outdoor kitchen nearby. Around us, middle-aged and elderly men read newspapers or chatted as they slowly nursed their coffee. Some birdcages sat prominently in the middle of the terrace, reminding me of the old Hong Kong cafés I’d seen in films, where men bring their birds out for milk tea.

There’s something plainly civilized about park cafés — they help make public space comfortable, complete and less banal. So I was happy to hear yesterday that in Montreal, the Plateau Mont-Royal’s new Projet Montréal administration wants to introduce a café to Lafontaine Park. As long as the café is affordable and its revenues used to maintain the park around it, I can’t see many downsides to this idea. Maybe Montreal will end up with a bit of Tao Dan on the Plateau.

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Hong Kong Rooftops: BBQ

There are signs that something is amiss as I make my way up the narrow stairs of this nondescript building, passing by boxes of empty beer bottles towards the smell of charcoal and the sound of laughter.

What’s going on becomes clear when I emerge onto the roof, a verdant oasis filled with smoke and lively conversation. It’s a barbecue. To be precise, it’s a cook-it-yourself barbecue restaurant, no different from those in the countryside of Hong Kong except that this one in the middle of Mongkok, high above a busy shopping street.

The location actually makes sense. Rooftops are the most obvious point of escape from a crowded city, a place to get away without leaving anything behind. Up here, among the plants and sizzling chicken wings, the noise of traffic recedes and a kind of tranquillity sets in. It’s not the same kind of quietude you experience in the country, but something else entirely: an urban retreat, a cocoon amidst the highrises.

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Deng vs. Mao

I wonder what Mao Zedong would have thought of Shenzhen.