On the streets of Yangon, you still hear Gujarati, Tamil and Bengali.

In Yogyakarta, you see signs of a former glorious Indic past in the street signs and in the temples of Borobodur.

When I think of the 'fish-eating people of this part of the world', I think of the Bengalis, and the Teochews, in India and China respectively. And everyone in between.

As a Teochew person who has traveled the entire region between southwest China to Bengal, I feel a continuous line of cuisine enjoyment through different fish dishes of the places I've passed through.

Today, here in Philadelphia, I bought my Bangladeshi hosts a can of black bean dace that I told them was 'southern Chinese poverty food'. They opened it and ate it and said it went with all of their food. I thought they would like it because when I had a salted ilish in Bangladesh, I thought it tasted like black beans and dace.

We walked around and went to a Burmese grocery store, where my hosts rummaged through a freezer looking for fish from home. The Rohingya shop owner was able to speak with them and help them; they have the same fish dishes.

I always feel as if you can drop me anywhere in this entire swath of Asia between the Bay of Bengal and southwest China and Indonesia, and I would feel very much like home. I would speak most of the languages, and love most of the food.