Through my eye

…I felt cheese and Chinese buns are connected.
It happened when I entered a cheese shop in Amsterdam. The yellowness overwhelmed and fascinated me. Shelves on both sides were carrying, it seemed, indefinitely pieces of yellow round cheese. And because the shop was neither big nor was the ceiling high, the shelves seemed endless going into the deep where I felt, I was participant of a 3D effect.
Suddenly, I had a flashback. I was in the middle of the morning street life in Shanghai where hundreds of little round Chinese buns were sold on huge and high steam barrels that marked my way to the tube station. Every street shop owner would sell more or less all kind of breakfast dishes but the buns stood out on that street with their white-shiny glance and transparent steam that spiralled up in the air which I saw from the distance.

As I worked my way from the left entrance side, the shelves were – funnily enough and/or purposely – also in yellow tone, beige. It had the result that cheese pieces were seemingly floating in the air, though on exact measured spaces of five cubicles. There were so much different yellows that I tried to define as they appeared to me: from white-bright yellow, gold-shiny yellow, dull-eggshell yellow, dark-dirty yellow until redish-yellow that I would perhaps categorise as orange.

Starring at them, I wondered how different or similar they would taste.
And luckily, there were several small tables in the middle of the shop placed with likewise several cheese plates. Shop clerks on every table invited me to try either with a marinade sauce or without it. I thanked them and was complete in awe as I told myself ‘even though, they all have more or less the same colour, whether outside or inside, the taste couldn’t be more different which remembered me on Chinese buns. They look almost all the same, and yet they are always a surprise. Even though I know from asking or reading which fillings the buns had, it could be the same filling, let’s say red bean paste but every street baker has different ingredients and makes the buns differently. I would never know how sweet the red bean paste is or how salty the meat and vegetarian filling is.

The time I spent in the cheese shop was a familiar scenario transferred in a very touristic location. Because I knew that cheese shop was a likely commercial set-up but it was a very pleasant place to be in that moment.