Nov 20 2001 - A Chinese Meal

An innocuous subject, is it not? We have all been to Chinese restaurants. Many cities have quarters famous for their Oriental fare. There can surely be nothing of interest to tell here. Well you be the judge.

There are many sorts of Chinese restaurants and we are all familiar with ones described as Cantonese, Peking-Style etc. There are some that are famously spicy – Szechwan for example, so where to eat? Naturally I have no idea and either just wander in somewhere if I am on my own or rely totally on my guides if I am with my hosts.

That is the easy bit. Chinese people like their food fresh. What is unusual about that I here you say. In Guangzhou, they like it fresh enough that it is alive when they get to the restaurant. Squeamish westerners hide behind a menu when they can but they normally have to go and choose their individual crab or chicken (or snake or squirrel or crocodile or tortoise or frog.) Yes, they will eat ANYTHING here. The only living creatures, apart from men, you will see in Guangzhou are dragonflies. Why dragonflies? They are normally not out in the open, are found near water, avoid dense population and all that sort of thing but surely can be caught in nets. I have never seen so many as I have here. What have the people got against them? I have eaten flying ants (tasteless) in Africa – where there are lots of things that are not eaten there so why do the Chinese not eat dragonflies?

You have no idea how far this food fetish goes. Apparently perfectly sane, well-travelled 20-odd year olds, who know that I am not a carnivore, insist that I ought to try frog – it is delicious. Naturally the fish section includes frog so perhaps that is a clue. How many snakes have you actually seen? Well come and walk round the streets of Guangzhou, you see them by the roadside tied together in bundles. Tortoises – you think that they are things that you buy for kids that die every winter when they are supposed to be hibernating. No, no, no – an excellent meal. I must confess to my usual squeamishness here, I have not, knowingly seen one eaten yet, but, as in Bali, they probably rip the shells off while they are still alive to make sure they are fresh!

There is a saying here that you can eat everything in the sea except submarines, everything in the air except aircraft and everything on land except man. I am pretty confident about the first two…

I will illustrate the eating process by describing what happens at the restaurant that we normally go to for lunch. This would be a better story I am sure if this place had a name; it undoubtedly does and I think that I have heard it mentioned but my translation abilities have not yet aspired to anything more than counting to five (yes, I do know what beer is).

As you approach you can see various items of food moving around in racks and tanks. Fortunately, we normally avoid this and head straight indoors after our daily viewing of which way round the shark is. The shark tank is about 2 metres by 60 centimetres; Larry is about 1 metre. The poor creature’s ability to turn was in doubt until it was noticed facing the other way one day; now it could have been hoisted out and turned round but animal rights are not too high on the agenda here, so it probably moved. Imagine the surprise when the tank was empty yesterday – somebody had obviously had a big enough party to eat it the night before, either that or poor Larry had died of boredom and the staff had eaten him.

Naturally, we are bowed indoors by smiling staff. We walk upstairs and are bowed to our table by more smiling staff. These smiling staff are always women whose main quality seems to be very thin legs. This is a requirement because they will all have identical uniforms with slit seams up the side. This job is, of course, completely different from the standers-around in the hotel; in a restaurant they have a job – take you to your table – unlike the similarly clad ladies in the hotels who do nothing except, about once every half an hour or so, answer a question asked by some stupid foreigner. Her answer will be to point to the left at the counter clearly marked “Reception” for new arrivals or to the right at the counter clearly marked “Concierge” for everything else.

Once at your table a new team take over putting on your napkin, minutely adjusting the position of your crockery, cutlery etc. and putting your cup and saucer on your plate for some reason that completely eludes me. The people who can perform this function are clearly defined – I will come to that shortly. Warm face cloths are produced, tea is poured and menus are produced and ignored by the locals. Occasionally a westerner will look at the menu but it is far easier to leave it to our excellent hosts; none of the restaurant staff appear to speak any English beyond the “Hallo”, “Thank you” level of my Chinese. Something is ordered, we know not what although we are generally consulted about the cooking method of the rice. When my reading of Chinese has improved I will be able to read some of the items ordered on the copy that is left; I might risk a beer soon to try my luck.

Used face cloths are picked up with pincers (no, not just mine.) Some nibbles appear of varying degree of fury or sweetness to keep you ticking over whilst you wait for the food. You have a chance to look around and absorb the staff. There is another class of misfit (apart from the thin-legged group); these are the cutlery, crockery, facecloth and glass collectors. They can collect the goods from the two collection points amongst the 24 tables and they wear brown uniforms – this completely upsets the pattern – and they are the only men. They have no other duties.

The first plate of food is brought by a girl in a drab green one-piece uniform with another drab, darker green pinafore over the top of the uniform. It will be neither the first item that you ordered nor the first one on the menu; it will be the first one that happens to be cooked. When I say brought, I mean brought – not placed on the table; she walks up with her tray and waits for someone of a greater rank to come and take it off her tray and put it on the table. This will, of course involve re-arranging the crockery and cutlery even if you have not touched it, before taking the plate off the tray and placing it on the table. The serving wench of lower rank departs after putting her stamp on the order card left at your table. She has no other duties of any kind and her lowly rank is reinforced by her badge number which will be somewhere around 100.

The food can have been placed upon the table by anybody of higher rank but is usually done by the next rank up. In addition to placing food she can clear tables, call higher ranks to adjust your order, adjust your placings, bring and remove face cloths – yes these are busy people with badge numbers in the 030 to 080 range, wear a drab green jacket and black skirt but still have the same flat heeled shoes of the lesser rank.

So you all tuck in starting with the most senior person there, of course. These are courteous people who do not laugh like a drain as you trail food across the tablecloth with your chopsticks. I have come to appreciate chopsticks – if you are given a choice, go for those with the sharpest tips. These has two advantages; a slight misalignment does not produce violent 90 degree swings of the food in the damn things and a surreptitious stab at something soft is more likely to be effective.

Dishes are brought by the lowest rank and placed upon the table by their superiors (the table is rearranged each time of course) and consumed. Empty plates are removed – sometimes with such alacrity that you would have had the last little bit of some tasty thing that you have never eaten before if the staff were not so efficient. The ladies of the correct rank always ask permission but this is done by a high speed thrust forward of an open hand that requires countermanding to stop the intended action. My Chinese is not yet up to saying “No, I am a fat foreigner who was brought up to empty my plate”.

The only thing that you can rely on in the order of the dishes is that the rice will be last. This is, apparently, to allow you to enjoy the full flavours of the cooking before you get down to the serious business of high speed shovelling of carbo-hydrates into your gob. After the food is cleared away melon and water-melon are brought to cleanse the palette (after some judicious work with a couple of pre-packed toothpicks of course.) This fruit is never ordered and is the one absolute constant across all restaurants, whatever the standard or variety of cooking.

The remains are cleared and the bill is called for. This activity must be carried out by a lady of higher rank. The same lady may have taken your order but it is odds against; anybody of the same rank can move from table to table. At first glance these ladies do not look of significantly different rank from the numerous ones who do most of the work; it is just that their jacket is light green. Then you realise that they actually have a blouse on and a sort of lace tie as well. (Down Sleazy, the lower ranks are buttoned up to the neck.) Perhaps, more importantly, their black shoes have heels – about 4 centimetres. Yes, these are a real power in the land; not only can they do everything that the lower ranks can do but also take your order and take the completed order card away at the end of the meal – they can even sit at the desk and work out your bill!

However, their numbers are only in the teens and the Double O numbers really count (although a woman with 007 on her chest does seem wrong to me). These are dressed all in black and have real high heels. They run the place and look after any big groups and do a lot of ordering and they calculate most of the bills and can sit BEHIND the desk.

I suspect the no. 001 owns the place, she sometimes dresses in grey, not black!

We are bowed out by the five girls who admitted us, plus anybody else who is not busy; they all stand at the top of the stairs except the couple who have to open the door for you at the bottom.

Exaggeration – not in the least; that is what happens. Uniforms vary and the odd rank may, as far as I can tell, be missed in some restaurants. You always have to see the food on the way in or no-one would eat there and you will always get things that you have never eaten before in your life. My ambition is to eat something I have never had before every day that I am here. It is a good job I stop at fish; I could be here years.