During a visit to Chinatown in San Francisco, I wandered into a small shop filled with interesting Chinese souvenirs. One item caught my attention: a round black hat with a red tassel. Of course, I had to try it on.
As I looked at myself in the store mirror, my memory was at it again.
When I was a kid, I sometimes went to the movies by myself. I would go to a second-run theater that showed older films, and that was where I discovered Jackie Chan’s Hong Kong movies. To this day, I actually prefer those films to his Hollywood ones.
Thankfully, the movies were dubbed in English. They were packed with action, comedy, and those incredible fight scenes. But part of the entertainment was the dubbing itself. The English dialogue and the actors’ mouths didn’t always cooperate. Sometimes the voice had already finished the sentence while the mouth seemed to have a few more words left to say. As a kid, I thought that was hilarious.
Looking at that hat brought all those characters and movies back to me. They were more than just entertainment. They became a small part of my childhood, a place I could disappear into for a couple of hours whenever I needed a break from playing in the streets.
Funny how something as simple as trying on a hat in Chinatown can suddenly take you halfway around the world and decades back in time.
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