Guys in diners: China / Vermont

Above: When I traveled to China in 1984, it was officially open only to government-sanctioned group tours. But there were rumors that you could buy a tourist visa at Chungking Mansions, a crumbling Hong Kong fire-hazard warren of restaurants, travel agencies, rooming houses; “massage parlors,” and bizarrely, a grimy office on an upper floor that was an outpost of China’s Department of Agriculture. You had to leave your passport there for a few days, hoping the whole thing wasn’t a scam, and return with cash in exchange for an official stamp allowing travel in China.

Visa in hand, Jay and I spent three months wandering, mostly by cigarette-smoke clogged trains, in a large ambling circle that included Guangzhou, Guilin, Kunming, Xian, Wuhan, Mongolia, Shanghai, Beijing, and myriad tiny towns between.

The country was poor and the meals served in cafes like this were often boiled cabbage in broth topped with a slick of animal fat. Mao was not long dead, and almost everyone still wore the uniform blue or green clothing that marked his regime.

Below: L&M, a near-perfect diner on Main St., in Barre, VT, was a place where regulars ordered the usual. The photo of this breakfast gathering is from 2014, and the business is long gone. As if desertion wasn't sad enough, the boarded-up building took several feet of water during last year's July floods.

Here's what it looked like in May 2023 just before the rivers rose: