欻冰

There's a 7-Eleven a couple blocks down from my apartment, and I think it's great. I'd only been in once before tonight, but I always look at it when I walk by because, well, it's 7-Eleven. 7-Elevens dominated my life before I came to the States. In Taipei and Hong Kong, if you start at a 7-Eleven and then walk in any direction for 15 minutes, you will come across another 7-Eleven. No joke. In my apartment complex alone, there were two. Maybe three.

So I'm walking towards a cafe/diner place earlier tonight to get some dinner and do some work, and just before I pass the 7-Eleven, a couple guys walking towards me are talking and the only word I catch from their conversation is, "Slurpee." I decide right then that I will have myself a Slurpee, though I hold off until after I do some eating and studying, on the walk back to my apartment.

Slurpees and their next of kin have been an important part of my life.

In Taipei, circa 1986, my obasan would buy me chua bing in those thin plastic baggies that she would then empty out into a bowl. I remember it being purple.

In Hong Kong, circa 1990, I think I probably had my first actual Slurpee, from the 7-11 at Repulse Bay Beach. My brother and I always got Slurpees at 7-Elevens starting around then. Always the Coke flavor. I can't seem to remember if they even had any other flavors back then.

In Taipei, circa 1994, I hung out a lot at the TAS snack bar. Doughnut in the morning, chicken nuggets for lunch, and a pretzel with cheese after school. And also a slushie at some point. Usually the orange flavor, I think. So really just a Fanta Slurpee.

In Taipei, circa 1996, the convenience store across the street from my apartment changed from whatever chain it was before to Niko Mart (it changed once more before I left, but curiously, it was never a 7-Eleven). And I walked in one day and saw their chua bing/Slurpee/slushie machine and thought I'd give it a try. I picked the orange-colored flavor. It came out more ice than slush, so more chua bing than Slurpee. But it wasn't orange-flavored.

It was something else, something wonderful. It was the very flavor my obasan used to get me in a plastic baggie when I was three years old. I had been searching for this flavor my whole life up to that point, but no purple-colored flavor ever came close. But this was it. 百香果. Nice, easy characters which I could read. And which I later learned was passion fruit.

So my memory was playing tricks, but to this day I don't know if it was tricking my vision or my taste. Was it really purple when I was little? Or was the sweet goodness of passion fruit so delicious that I had to convince myself this was the taste that made me first fall in love with chua bing?

I have wondered this all my life.