Yum cha on the 8th Day of the Chinese New Year with a dim sum breakfast at Yong Pin on Sungei Ujong Road.
Penangites taking advantage of the loosening of the SOPs on Day 39 of the current pandemic lockdown: from today, more than 2 persons can share a table, subject to 1-metre distance between the diners.
We made our selection from the dim sum counters at the entrance - a change in procedures compared to pre-COVID days when waitresses bearing trays of dim sum would make their rounds to the tables.
Now, we order at the counter, and our selection would be brought straight to our table.
Some of the items we had:
“Siu mai” (pork-shrimp dumplings)
“Lor mai kai” - steamed glutinous rice with chicken, char-siu, and shitake mushroom
Pork-shrimp dumplings with ginger, century egg and carrot
Prawn-seaweed roll
“Cheung fun” - steamed rice rolls with shrimp filling
“Lou pat kou” - pan-fried radish cake
“Dai pao” - big, chicken bun - I love this: a large fluffy steamed bun with chicken, radish, Chinese sausage & mushroom filling, flavoured with Shaoxing wine, ginger juice, oyster sauce and other condiments.
Baked “cha-siu pao”
“Malai kou” - literally, “Malay cake”, though it’s a wholly HK-Cantonese creation, and has nothing to do with Malaysia. Steamed sponge cake with a caramelised sugar aroma & flavour.
The whole place exuded an old-world atmosphere, with coat-hangers on the walls - which people used for hats and motorbike helmets nowadays. 
The main altar of the 3 Taoist Deities: the red-faced Guan Yu, white-faced Guan Ping and black-faced Zhou Cang, look down on the diners. Most households and businesses will have altars like this one, with the gods and deities whom the house/shop-owner choose to worship.
Sungei Ujong Road, off Prangin Road - one of the narrow streets in Chinatown, where Yong Pin is located.
