Double Handshake

San Joy Lao, a Chinese restaurant in the heart of Lima’s Chinatown, gets my award for most Orientalized chifa in the city. Chifas, or Chinese restaurants with Peruvian characteristics, are ubiquitous around the city and catching on in upscale markets abroad as well. The word comes from a transliteration of 吃饭, “to eat”, which Chinese people have been doing in Peru for 150 years. When you ask a Peruvian taxi driver his thoughts about Chinese people, he will likely start talking about chifas.

Chifa food is generally cheap and good. The decor in most restaurants is on par with Chinese restaurants just about anywhere else on earth: reprints of rural landscapes and calligraphy, red lanterns, bottles of soy sauce on wooden tables, a wall calendar, a TV crammed in a corner. To my palate, the food at most chifas tastes more similar to Chinese restaurants in the US than in China (ie. more meat, less vegetables, sweeter, less oily, and, of course, fortune cookies).

San Joy Lao aims a bit higher in its imitation of all things China. Not only do they have bored-looking hostesses standing around in qipaos like China, but there’s erhu music as well. If it’s your birthday, the staff come to your table singing: “祝你生日快乐, 祝你生日快乐!”. The food is very good, but a bit pricier than your average hole-in-the-wall chifa. You’re paying for the ambience.

When I walked by the restaurant yesterday, I noticed a new addition: a banner celebrating Sino-Peruvian friendship. It reads: “159 years of immigration from China to Peru. 25 years of brotherhood between the cities Beijing and Lima.” The latter figure refers to 1983, when Lima and Beijing became sister cities.

And then, above the text, there is a high-quality Photoshopped image of – what else – the Great Wall winding seamlessly toward the ancient Incan city Machu Picchu. Ah, the harmony makes you hungry, doesn’t it?

“Ideal for work or personal use: Cheap Chinese Automobiles.” In Peru, while Japanese car brands Toyota and Nissan are still the heavy hitters, Chinese brands Great Wall, Geely, Chery and First Automotive Works (FAW) started arriving in 2006. The article in El Men that caught my eye on the newsstand states there are 60 makes of Chinese cars and buses on the streets of Peru. In 2008, 7,500 Chinese units were sold here, which was 8% of the market.

As the headline implies, Chinese cars are attractive because they are cheap. In Lima, a Toyota Yaris retails for about US$12,000, while a comparable Chinese model goes for around US$8,000. The article also mentions that some of the vehicles come with an option to run on natural gas.

Still, I haven’t noticed any Chinese cars on the road here in Lima; I’ll stay on the look out and post pictures when there is a sighting.