The Tea Egg Kettle at Midnight

At eleven forty, the corner of Jiefang Road and the old lane is mostly dark. The pharmacy has pulled down its shutter. The fruit shop is a row of black awnings. Only one light stays on, low and amber, under a striped umbrella that has faded to the color of weak tea. Beneath it sits a small electric cart, and on the cart, a pot. The pot is not large — it could hold maybe forty eggs — but it has been simmering since six in the evening, and the steam that rises from it carries soy, starches, star anise, and the particular patience of something that has been cooking for a long time. The woman who owns the pot is sixty-seven years old. Her name is Auntie Chen, though almost nobody calls her that to her face. They call her 茶叶蛋 auntie, as if the eggs and the woman were the same thing, which, after twenty years on this corner, they more or less are.

The first regular of the night arrives at ten past twelve. He is a delivery rider, still wearing his helmet, the visor up. He does not need to order. He holds up two fingers, and Auntie Chen fishes two eggs out of the pot with a long-handled spoon, drops them into a small paper cup, and pours a little of the dark broth over them. He pays with his phone, says one word of thanks, and eats standing up, leaning against his scooter. In four minutes he is gone. She does not watch him leave. She is already looking down the street, because she knows who comes next.

At half past twelve, a nurse from the hospital two blocks away walks over in her scrubs, a jacket tied around her waist. She buys three eggs and a bottle of water, and she stands at the cart for a few minutes, not talking much, just letting the steam warm her face. Then a taxi pulls up. The driver rolls down his window and asks for two eggs, no broth, and a packet of tissues, which Auntie Chen keeps in a plastic box under the cart. He is a 熟客 — he has stopped here almost every night for six years, and she already has his change ready before he finishes asking. The night, she says, has a rhythm. The rider comes first, then the nurse, then the taxi, then a gap, then the students from the cram school when exams are near. She does not need a clock. The street tells her the time.

Between one and two, the corner is quiet. Auntie Chen sits on a small stool, her hands folded on her knees. She does not look at her phone. She watches the street the way other people watch television. A young man walks past with a guitar case and stops, hesitates, and asks for one egg. He eats it slowly, standing at the curb, and she does not hurry him. When he leaves, she tells me that he comes by about once a month, always after a late rehearsal, and that he always buys exactly one egg. She does not know his name. She knows his egg.

I ask her why she still keeps the pot going at this hour, when the supermarket across the street sells eggs in boxes of ten, twenty-four hours a day. She thinks about this for a while, stirring the broth with the long spoon. A box of eggs from the supermarket, she says, is a thing you buy. A 夜宵 from a corner pot is a thing you are given, even if you pay for it. The supermarket sells eggs. She sells the feeling that someone is still awake, and that the night is not empty. She has heard this idea expressed in many ways over the years — by the nurse, by the taxi driver, by a crying woman who once sat on the curb and ate three eggs without saying a word. But she does not put it in those words herself. She just keeps the pot simmering.

At two forty, the street empties. Auntie Chen lifts the lid and counts the eggs left in the pot. Seven. She considers this for a moment, then turns the heat down low and sits back down. Seven eggs is not enough to close for. Someone might still come. At three ten, a man in a security guard's uniform appears from the direction of the office building, walking slowly, and buys four eggs. At three forty, a woman with a suitcase, coming from the night bus stop, buys two. That leaves one 茶叶蛋 in the pot. Auntie Chen looks at it, then at the empty street, and she laughs quietly to herself. She fishes out the last egg, peels it, and eats it standing at her own cart, looking up at the streetlight.

At four, she begins to 收摊. She pours the last of the broth into a thermos, rinses the pot with hot water from a second kettle, and wipes the cart down with a cloth that she folds into a perfect square. The striped umbrella comes down last. She loads everything onto the electric cart and walks it slowly toward the lane, the motor humming softly. The corner goes dark. The streetlight stays on, and the pharmacy shutter stays down, and the night, for a few hours, belongs to no one. But the pot will be back at six in the evening, and the steam will rise again, and the riders, the nurse, the taxi driver, and the man with the guitar case — the old 熟客 of the corner — will all find their way back to the same amber light.