I went to Li Ming's last week to pick up the fixings for the New Year's nian gao, fast becoming a tradition in our household though my understanding is that actual Chinese people eat a sweet version of the rice cakes. I cooked a bunch of those for Chinese New Year's at Jonathan and Sharon's a couple of years back and was less excited about them. One thing I will say is that if the management of Li Ming's keep the place cool in summer -- and they most assuredly do -- they don't do the opposite in winter. Dress warmly when visiting, even if you plan to eat lunch there from the steam table, as Bobby and I do as often as we think of it.
On the way out I picked up an issue of Que Pasa, a Spanish-language newspaper out of the Triad (the NC triumvirate of cities, to be clear. Not the Chinese crime syndicate. To the best of my knowledge. I need newspaper both to start fires in the fireplace -- now that we don't get a print newspaper -- y tambien a practicar leer en espanol, something I don't do enough of.
I learned a fair amount from the paper. For instance, I had not been aware that the OBBBA places a 1% tax on remittances sent through cash or money transfer services like Western Union. This seems harsh given most wages remitted have already been subject to income tax. It could easily have the effect of driving immigrants into the banking system -- where they may have to commit fraud to establish accounts -- which could be used against them by ICE and make them more easily deportable. Alternately, this could fuel the adoption of cryptocurrency and stable coins as a payment mechanism -- currently helpful to Trump and his cryptobro allies. For the record, US remittances to Mexico were probably about $60 billion in 2025, something like 3% of Mexican GDP.
Also, I learned that the Mexican Government has a Consulate in Raleigh, one of about fifty spread around the US to provide services to Mexicans. Makes sense.
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