Dining Out

We have a wonderful breakfast buffet here at the White Swan. We take full advantage and try to fill ourselves up so we can just snack at lunch in the room and only have one meal out a day. We're usually starving by 4 o'clock. Today it was rainy pretty hard about that time but let up just enough for us to get out for dinner. We decided not to venture far. We went to a Cantonese restaurant just a block away from the hotel. Honestly, by their reaction you'd think they had never had Americans there before. Certainly that could not be the case, but no one seemed to speak English which is unusual so close to the hotel that serves a very international clientelle. That would not be a problem we figured, since there were pictures on the menu. Ah, the menu...

I should have known I was in trouble when we walked in and passed by tanks full of assorted sea creatures. I am not kidding when I say that on a menu with at least 50 options I could only find one or two things that didn't make my stomach turn. I really don't think I'm that picky of an eater (stop laughing, I'm really not) but if you don't know this about me, I hate seafood. All kinds. Definitely limited my options. Anyway, I wish I could remember more, but here's a taste....boiled Pig tripe, fish organs, many eel and snake varieties, sea cucumber and gooey duck (Bill says that may not be half bad in you're from Washington) and the one chicken option...fried innerds. I saw one item that looked like pork on another menu and asked what it was. After some scurrying around the waiter returned with another menu with many more "American" options. After seeing all the pictures on the menu I was not feeling very adventurous so we went with sweet and sour pork, pepper steak and broccoli.

Unlike in the states, they bring things out as they are ready here in China, not all together. So first came the broccoli. Yum. Next came the sweet and sour pork. Looked familiar, but after a few bites without finding any pork we both began to chuckle. That's alright, we thought, we've got steak coming. Oh, how I wish I had taken a picture. The waiter comes out and places this enormous plate in front of us with one itty, bitty piece of steak on it, mostly bone. Never order steak in a restaurant full of fish tanks.

All this time, a myriad of wait staff would come by, often in pairs, take a good long look at our table peek at our bill as if to check out what in the world these Americans ordered, mutter something in Cantonese to one another and then disappear. Once they came back with a fork and a knife. Apparently we looked like we needed help. Another time a waitress we had never seen appeared with scissors to cut the meat for us. Much appreciated, wasn't sure how we were going to do that with chopsticks. What we lacked in meat Bill made up for in tea, that they just kept pouring. It was such a comical experience. Although Sage did not think so. She was pretty unhappy the whole time. Not sure why, perhaps she was just overstimulated or tired, but she was fussy. She refused to eat her rice (haven't seen her eat that since we got her and they say she ate it twice a day at the orphanage), and cried more than we've seen.

The clincher in all it was that our tiny piece of steak was nearly $10 and when Bill handed over the 172 RMB (about $25) pretty much just for broccoli since the meat was fairly non-existent, we both had to try hard to stifle our laughs. It was just weird.

Bill scouted out the local Subway after we left :)