I AM SIGHTSEEING in Hong Kong. The sights and smells on the street are overwhelming. The Chinese eat everything, and it is all for sale, coiled up in baskets, hanging from shop windows, crowded in cages.  I am slightly sickened, can’t eat anything but tuna fish sandwiches and chocolate milkshakes in the hotel restaurant.

I come across a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop with a handwritten sign in the window. It says “Flavor of the Month: Yam”  I am intrigued. I walk inside and order a cone of the flavor of the month.

The ice cream is purple. It tastes like yam.