Back alley reportage

The other day, on my way to getting arugula from the Avocado Lady I took a shortcut through a residential block. It's common for residents to turn their first floor apartments into shops, and one apartment I passed had bins of vegetables out front. I spotted a couple bunches of asparagus, another item on my list. 

The owner was napping in a reclined chair in the doorway when I arrived, but when I stopped to look he sat up, smiled, and asked where I was from. I told him. 

"Hey, how come you guys like to eat tomatoes, potatoes, and onions so much?" he asked.

"I guess we just grew up eating them," I offered. 

I picked up the two bunches of asparagus and asked the price.

"That's nine," he said, meaning nine Renminbi (about $1.40) for 500 grams. 

I hesitated, trying to remember the price from the last time I'd bought asparagus. 

"Let's weigh it and see," the man said, and placed it on the scale. "That's eleven."

"I'll just take one then," I said. The other bunch was a little wilted. 

"They're fine, take them all!" he said. "Look." He took a knife and cut off the ends of the stems, and showed me the new ends. They still looked withered, but I took them all. 

Ever the nosy pedestrian, I interrupted this man on his phone to ask him if he knew anything about the tree behind him.

"I planted it," he said. "Fifty years ago."

I wondered if he was a lot older than he looked.

"Wow! Amazing!" I offered, while he looked at me severely. I turned around and kept walking.

I was intrigued by this "Coffee & More" sign above a restaurant near my new apartment. I didn't see any coffee machines inside the restaurant, so I approached a waitress standing outside and asked.

"Excuse me. That 'Coffee' sign up there, what's it referring to?"

"It's a beverage," she replied, lifting an imaginary cup to her mouth.

Across the street from the Avocado Lady, outside of a butcher's shop, there was a sign saying  "Noodles, 2F". Hungry, we pushed in, past the men chopping whole ducks into parts. There was another sign scratched onto the back wall of the shop pointing to the left. Up an extraordinarily uneven, narrow staircase, we came into this room. Bowls of noodle toppings were arrayed in the corner. The rest of the room was full of empty tables.

A woman came out of the kitchen and stood in front of us without speaking.

"Still have any?" we asked. She nodded and asked us what toppings we wanted. 

Noodles with kaofu (烤麸), a spongy thing made out of fermented wheat gluten. So it's basically a type of bread.