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THE EXOTIC DRINKING BOOK
also because she had lost one of her pet jewel jade earrings she'd bar–
gained half a day to get up in Canton or somewhere. We never found
the earring, and had to make the other into a necklace pendant too-–
and as for the tub of freesias, we toted the whole seventy pounds of
them along the Bund at Kowloon-and the sight of your humble
servant, thus burdened, was too much for the coolie roustabouts just
scratching themselves awake for the day's labour, and they howled
and giggled at the mad white man who would thus lose face aping
the porter's trade when he could hire it done. And as we came finally
up the spidery forward gangway the first fingers of a Rosy Dawn
searched up and over the stark mountains surrounding Hongkong's
superb harbour, and painted the hull of the
MARIPOSA
a maiden
blush tint where she lay just to the eastward of our own berth. Here
is the original receipt.
Take
1
liqueur glass
each
of the following: dry gin, orange curas;ao,
and cherry brandy. Add
1
tsp Rose's lime juice, or soda fountain lime
syrup. Put in a big champagne glass filled with
crac~ed
ice, stir, and
fill
with a touch of seltzer.... We later have found that by cutting
down the cherry brandy and curas;ao to
I
liqueur glass total for both,
and tossing in
1
pony of cognac, we have a drier mix, and not quite
so sweet, yet still maintaining authority enough for any man.
THE SO-CALLED RUSSIAN COCKTAIL, a
MEMORY
of
PEKING
'
in
1926
In
that year, which seems so very long ago now, Peking was a place
of sheer delight. Trade was better after the war, the memory of the
Revolution and
~assacre
of White Russians was a vague and tragic
business to Russians who were young enough to forget what had
been. There w_as a
l~vely
girl ':ho
_mainta~ed
a shop selling jades
and Imperial tnbute silks, carved ivones and kmgfisher feather screens
at the
Grande Hotel de
Pe~in.
And after a while we came to go
abou~
to odd parts of the vast city together, and one evening at the small
jewel-like house on Pa-Pao Hutung where we had gone for some
decent
sukiyaki-the
only place in Peking where we could
see
what
• II9 •