Matt and I treated ourselves to dim sum today.  Asian Pearl at Pacific East Mall in Richmond, where else?  We seriously over ordered, having circled nine items on the menu and then grabbing two on impulse as they made their way around the dining room.  Here you go:  green tea dumplings; Northern China dumplings; Shanghai dumplings; steamed beef balls; tofu with hoisin sauce; steamed tripe with ginger and scallions; steamed BBQ pork buns; shrimp rice noodles; salt and pepper squid; har gow; shrimp and scallop dumplings.  Matt loves dumplings, so I let him go hog-wild and figured I’d resign myself to eating them, too, though I’m not as fond of them.  Next to us were two big guys unable to defend five small plates while we were stacking steamers just to fit everything we ordered on the table.  They enjoyed Matthew relishing dumpling after dumpling, not missing a beat with the various sauces, and then punctuating his dumpling orgy with a few tripe shards and squid tentacles, happily chatting away.  I defended all three beef balls and quite a bit of the large plate of fried silken tofu.  If you come to this place, give the tofu a try — it is not at all greasy and has a nice crust.  They also serve good XO sauce rice noodles, which are your basic sheet rice noodles with scallions, rolled and then charred in a wok with the XO sauce and, I would guess, a bit of soy sauce, and served dry-style.  After packing up leftovers we broke into the green tea dumplings, with their odd, blackish-green and grainy semi-liquid filling.  Funny what you wind up liking when you try things.