Ni Hao! Hello!

Greetings, Honorable Visitor!

I am Bai Hu and I am happy to welcome you to the Mei Hui Teahouse - the finest establishment in Limehouse. The young lady there to your right is Dan Dan and she will be happy to serve you some tea. May I recommend our gunpowder green tea? It is refreshing and has a restorative effect on your health.

Here you are... This is the best table in the house. If you would like something to eat with your tea, the dim sum cart will be along shortly. You must try the stuffed bao buns. They really are quite magnificent. It is my job to know these things after all, for I am the manager. The owner, Mr. Long, will permit nothing but the finest to be served in his teahouse.

Hmmm...what was that? Is Mr. Long a criminal? You must have been reading too many sensational newspaper articles! You aren't with Scotland Yard are you? Ah, I thought not for you are too polite, but it would not matter if you were. We would serve you nonetheless.

Policemen are frequent visitors here. They turn the place upside down several times a month, muttering things about Triads. Such rumours are quite unfounded, I assure you. We run a honest business here.

Ah, here comes our ambassador, Shi Shi. He is what you English call a Pekingese. He was a gift to me from the Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi. He was raised by her own hand and, though he lives far from his homeland now, he has never forgotten that he is royalty. Hmmm? How did a humble teahouse manager come to have an Imperial Pekingese? My aren't you a cheeky one! Let me remind you of an old proverb from my country: Listen twice, talk once. Now, do please enjoy your tea.

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The squalor of Limehouse is that strange squalor of the East which seems to conceal vicious splendour. There is an air of something unrevealed in those narrow streets of shuttered houses, each one of which appears to be hugging its own dreadful little secret… you might open a filthy door and find yourself in a palace sweet with joss-sticks, where queer things happen in a mist of smoke……The silence grips you, almost persuading you that behind it is something which you are always on the verge of discovering; some mystery of vice or of beauty, or of terror and cruelty.
H.V. Morton, The Nights of London, 1926