I dined in the comfort of my shikumen that evening and as my dinner was cleared the waitress noticed I had caught a cold; she thoughtfully offered to prepare some fresh ginger tea. The following morning at breakfast, a cheerful waiter asked if I was feeling better and once again offered the Asian cure-all of hot ginger tea. I declined, explaining I preferred ginger soup with rice dumplings. We joked about our parents’ remedies and how almost every herbal concoction we were obliged to ingest featured ginger.
