The noodle stall that keeps a light on for people coming home late

After the night market on the city's south side closes down, one noodle stall is still lit at the southeast corner of the intersection. The stall's owner is surnamed Tang; everyone calls him Lao Tang.

Lao Tang's hours are strange: the stall sets up at ten at night and closes at three in the morning. On paper that's the worst slot there is — no foot traffic, no business. Yet his stall is never short of customers: designated drivers finishing their last fare, nurses coming off the night shift in the ER, young people driven to despair by revisions, travelers catching the first train, old neighbors who can't sleep. They call this place the "second canteen."

Lao Tang is in his fifties. He used to be a boiler worker at the factory; after being laid off he pedaled a pedicab, guarded a warehouse, and finally set up this stall. He serves exactly four kinds of noodles: clear broth, hot and sour, shredded pork, and fried egg. Some urged him to expand the menu. He waved them off: "People eating noodles at this hour aren't picking varieties. They're picking warm."

What made Lao Tang famous in the city was a notebook with a green cover.

The notebook sits in a corner of the cart, its first page inscribed: "If you forgot your money, write it here; pay me back next time." Page after page: one bowl of clear-broth noodles, taxi driver Xiao Liu; one bowl of shredded-pork noodles with egg, the girl in the black down jacket... A rough count comes to more than three hundred entries a year. Neighbors winced on his behalf: wouldn't that ruin him? Lao Tang chuckled and turned to the last page — the page that keeps the account in reverse: "September 3rd, took in 50 extra, couldn't make change, holding it here." "Someone repaid two bowls — one extra; credit it."

He told me: "Ten years, four notebooks, and not one person has ever skipped the bill. You young people keep saying the world is cold. I squat at this corner every midnight, and that's not what I see. The people willing to come back at midnight to pay for a bowl of noodles — there are far more of them than you think."

The stall has a few unwritten rules of its own. For someone racing to catch a train, half the noodles and a full bowl of broth — "they're in a hurry; don't let the noodles hold them up." For a nurse coming off night shift, one extra poached egg in the bowl. For a young person who looks off, he sets out one more chair and doesn't pry — just brings the noodles over and pats their shoulder.

A regular told me about one winter two years back, when he'd just been laid off. For a week he came at midnight and sat at the stall without ordering, without eating — just sat. Lao Tang didn't ask anything. The first three nights he set down the smallest bowl of noodles he made, two poached eggs hidden at the bottom. On the fourth night the man broke down and cried. Lao Tang handed him a napkin and said, "Finish crying, then finish the bowl. When you're full, tomorrow's business can wait for tomorrow." Later he found a new job, and with his first paycheck he came running to put a thousand yuan of noodle credit on account. Lao Tang took one hundred. "You're doing well now. Come eat noodles often — that honors me enough."

The city's deep night keeps an order of its own: people who scatter in every direction by day set down their armor in front of a bowl of noodles.

Last year the city cracked down on stalls occupying the roadway, and the noodle stall was briefly slated for shutdown. The regulars went to the subdistrict office on their own to speak up; the dozen-plus signatures included taxi drivers, nurses, programmers, a retired teacher. In the end the subdistrict reserved a fixed pitch for Lao Tang in the night market. On the day the permit went up, Lao Tang wiped his old light box, ten years in service, over and over — three characters on it, half the red paint gone: Late Night Noodles.

At half past two in the morning I went back to Lao Tang's stall. The rain had just stopped. A designated driver squatted on the curb waiting for a fare, and Lao Tang handed him a bowl of hot soup: "No charge. Put something in you." The young man demurred; Lao Tang shoved the bowl into his hands: "While it's hot."

The steam rose off that bowl and melted into the city's damp night.