27 October 2013

Getting To Know You - China, Part 4

October 17, 2013

Meet Stan.

     Me: I think I saw lightning last night.
     Stan: That's way too much information.

     Patty: Did you see the pig snouts in the market?
     Stan: I don't know what they taste like, but they smell really good.

One night in Beijing Stan, Cathy, D and I ventured out to dinner on our own. Stan had read about a restaurant across town that makes delicious handmade noodles. The taxi ride through the city was not for the faint of heart. The driver made left turns through multi-lane intersections as if the four lanes of oncoming traffic weren't there. And for some reason the motorcycles and scooters don't use their headlights at night, but that didn't seem to slow them down at all. I only had to close my eyes twice.

The restaurant was very chic. The first thing I noticed upon entering was that all the customers were Chinese. The second thing I noticed was that none of the wait staff spoke English. When we asked for someone who did, the poor woman who was sent out to deal with us spoke English about as well as I speak Czech. She must have drawn the short straw in the kitchen. Our menus had photos with English captions, but even then we couldn't be sure about what we were ordering. Stan had heard that their specialty was a type of pasta shaped like a cat's ear. When the waitress nervously approached our table, Stan pointed to a photo in the menu, tugged his earlobe and said, "Meow." The waitress looked confused, so Stan meowed again, more convincingly this time. Then the waitress's eyes grew as big as saucers, and she backed away from the table crying, "No no no!" Holy crap, she thought we wanted to eat a cat. Thankfully, with more pointing and arm waving, Stan was able to coax her back and clear things up before anyone called the police.

Stan wants to take us to another restaurant when we reach Shanghai. We'll join him only if he promises not to bark at the dinner table.

Oh
Em
Gee


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