Pastelaria Tan

Ah Ming is from Toi San, Canton, China. He used to work as a cook for another Chinese owned sandwich shop four stores down. Three years ago, the lady owner financed him to buy this shop for R$100,000.

Last year, he built two houses back in China for Rmb 1 million.

Some nice story far from home, eh?

Chinese work hard. Brazilians wonder why Chinese are taking over their jobs and industries. Recently there are lots of publicity about China's garment invasion into Brazil.

A small city called Americana used to have over one thousand garment factories. Today there are only about one hundred left. It sounds like Hong Kong in the 90s.

Ah Ming's daughter Alesandra finished high school and is helping out at the lanchonete. Ah Ming and his wife are not educated people, but they are doing well. It is a very typical overseas Chinese story.

Now, he speaks more portugese than Toi San to me. He is forgetting his Chinese.

This is our lunch, very tasty. As usual, I have my cane juice freshly squeezed.

My lunch is always free since I know Ah Ming 8 years ago.

These are typical Brazilian sandwiches. Prices are cheap. They are very filling.

I had the one on the right. It is stuffed with ham and creamy cheese.

Adriana thinks their chicken pies are much tastier than the Brazilian shops.

Plenty of soda. Brazil is a pop country.