You keep walking along Xin Dong Lu, and then you take a seat-of-the-pants left to enter a dingy residential compound. The entrance is more like a dark alley, with cars and scooters and e-bikes piled up on top of each other. You hesitate, “is this right?”. You keep walking, it’s only another 50 meters, or another 50, and not more. On your right you see a dolled-up Japanese doll, the sort that you’ve heard about that are a dime-a-dozen in Tokyo, the sort that are in restaurants where black suited and gray tied businessmen go to and get a titillated over these dolled xiǎojiěs waitresses while they slurp noodles and chew on marinated snow peas. You keep walking, just a step further is your destination. You recognize the dimly lit sign, and with a sigh you wipe your imagined sweat from your imagined tense brow, you puff out your chest and straighten your backbone, feigning confidence you enter to be greeted with the smell of barbequeing vegetables and foie gras, immediately you dream of that eggplant served with living fish skin, and the outside melts away.