The pastry shop

As you come near the place, you can see the sign up front is in French. surly this is it. a place to buy high quality confections. As you enter you are bombarded with a happy children’s rendition of “we wish you a merry christmas” that goes on and on loudly in a loop, forever.

The signs for each kind of bread and cake are all in Chinese. But of course, you knew that coming in. this IS China, after all. and it’s not like you have a choice; you need to buy a cake for your kids. So..you go over your limied vocabulary and read the labels. Here the selection is great: Strawberry shortcake or strawberry shortcake OR...wait for it..strawberry shortcake. You decide to take the strawberry short cake. The one you pick is shaped like a baguette, with some cream in the trench that they lovingly cut in the middle, and strawberries stuck in a row. You put the cake on a tray and go to pay.

You look ahead, and you see that there is a line to the register and people constantly try to cut in. By the time you reach the cashier, another year has passed. It is then that they tell you that if you want to take the cake home you need to go to another line. (after paying, of course. nothing is free...)

Frustrated, you go to that wrapping up/takeout line. It’s really your fault. You should have known that this will not be easy. The line moves very fast..This is Strange, you think, Surly it takes more time to wrap a cake than to pay, right? Your suspicions trouble you, but not for long. Swiftly the line goes up, until a friendly aproned staffer takes the tray. You explain to her that you want the cake in a nice box for the party, and oh, please have it wrapped up with a nice paper while your at it.

She tells you that they don’t have boxes in the right size. The strawberry shortcake baguette is too long. she is very apologetic about this. when she sees that you are not going to take this lying down, she offers to cut the long cake to pieces and put each one into a separate miserable little box. the kind they have is only enough for one person, so you will need something like ten. Of course, this is how cakes are served and SOLD in France. no one has a large box for cakes in France. no one cuts a cake in France or blows the candles on a complete cake in France. and this is supposed to be a French cake shop. Resigned to your pathetic fate, you argue a bit more.. You try to reason.. you ask for the manager. But it’s all for naught. They can’t whip boxes out of thin air, and obviously you don’t know anything about the confectionery business. A woman behind you in the line has a strawberry shortcake shaped like a big crab. it doesn’t even fit inside the tray, looking a bit like the crab wants to escape. Her cake definitely won’t fit into these boxes. Guess that her birthday spread would look much worse than yours, you try to console yourslf..Who buys crab shaped cakes to begin with?! you saw this cake on the display. there were no other animal shapes. at least you chose something easy to cut. (was this some kind of intution?).

On the way out, they have a little display of samples to taste. All of them are more of the strawberry shortcake variety. You take a toothpick. You could never say no to free stuff. The cake has the right consistency of a strawberry shortcake, and looks good. But it tastes more like white bread with mayo.

The world seems to be caving in on you as you taste the foul thing. This is what it all amounts to. This and everything else.

You throw the strawberry shortcake on the ground, making a scene in front of the shop. The owner calls the police and they take you away in a padded van that looks like a baguette-shaped strawberry shortcake that was cut in half because there is no box that could fit it . The orderlies that take you are very polite. they give you a pink canvas shirt to wear. The inner padding of the van feels and looks like strawberry shortcake..

But the taste...oh..forget it...It’s not like you have a choice..