I would say I am an accomplished eater. Some would even call it a forte. It certainly did not strike me as being in a problem in China where there would be noodles, dumplings and odd looking meat for as far as the eye could see.
Unfortunately this was not the reality when we arrived in Beijing. After checking into hostel we decided to explore and get something to eat. The hostel was located in a set of hutongs in the north of the city. The hutongs are small alleyways leading into courtyards around which shops, houses and restaurants are based. It seems that with all the redevlopment in Beijing there is a desire to hold onto these streets as a connection to an older way of life.
So we set off blearey eyed and hungry and eventually stopped at a place that seemed to look nice enough and had a menu with pictures. We have three words of Chinese between us so the pointing method was to be our saviour. We were seated by a stern looking hostess in the middle of the restaurant. There was a lot of staring. People generally stared a lot at us in Beijing and took photos of us with and without our consent. We flicked through the menu cautiously and when the waitress came over we pointed to what looked like a meat dish some noodles and some pak choi. The waitress then began asking us questions. We kept smiling and just made a motion as if to drink and pointed to something on what we hoped was the drinks menu. They brought us two cokes. Good start.
In the middle of our table was a gas ring that other tables seemed to be using for their main dishes. While waiting for our dish we were brought two small china plates, two metal dishes and two pairs of chopsticks (thank god for grandparents who thought it was cultural to be made to use chopsticks for a takeaway when I was 8). A huge dish of dark meat was soon brought out (what I later learned to be a "hot pot" and a traditional dish) and placed on the gas ring with the veg and dried noodles on the side. The whole restaurant was now staring at us and waiting for our first cultural faux pas. We did not disappoint. I, trying to take the lead, clumsily picked up the slippery meat successviely guided it to the metal dish then tried to take a bite. It was cold. The hostess came rushing over and barked something at me while pointing at the main dish. Caught like a rabbit in the headlights and still with the meat clutched between my chopsticks I stared blankly back. I realised she meant I should return my half mawled meal back to the pot to heat up. It also turned out that the metal dish was for the bones. I was kind of eating out of a dog bowl. When heated and with the noodles and pak choi added to the broth it was delicious. We convinced ourselves that the meat was lamb although there was a wing in there. We thought it best not to dwell on the creatures origins and continued picking away at the meat. We managed to pay the bill and leave so ended our first cultural outing in Beijing.
For the next few days we managed to stay in our hostel for breakfast, get snacks for lunch and choose restaurants where the menus were in english or had lots of pictures. That is until the day we decided to visit the Great Wall of China. It was freezing cold and the city had been covered in smog since we got there but we thought out of the city we would see beautiful countryside (it turns out that the fog was thicker out by the Great Wall and we could only see about 100 yards in front of us). We went on an organised day trip which included transport, entry to the wall and a lunch.
We stopped about an hour into our trip and a jade factory. Anyone who has been to Beijing can tell you that all the tours like to take you to a jade factory or something similar where you can spend your money on ugly green dragon figurines. Lizzie and myself declined this chance to shop and went to sit in the cafe to wait for lunch. We sat at large round tables for about ten people and it was only as people began to join our table that it struck us; we were going to have to eat in front of these people. With no idea of chinese table manners all we could do was smile and hope for the best. Each table was brought a large bowl of rice which was passed round, a whole fish on the bone, some spare rib pieces, some cauliflour in an orange sauce, tofu in orange sauce, celery and ham in broth and unidentifiable veg plate (possibly marrow but looked a bit like melon). We waited to see what would happen and contrary to everything I had been taught as a child people began leaning accross the table to reach plates, using their licked chopstocks in communal dishes and, most impressively, an old woman sitting across from us had taken most of the fish and was proceeding to spit out all the bones on the tablecloth. We simply kept to the plates near us taking modest amounts of food until the old spitting lady picked up a few plates and passed them over for us to try. It seemed we had been accepted into ther group and we began to relax and enjoy the meal all of which tasted lovely. However a mere ten minutes later we looked up from our bowls to find not only our table but the entire adjacent table peering at us. We sighed into our rice. We were still outsiders.
My final tale of the week didn't happen while we were eating but in the vicinity of a popular coffee house. We decided to take the time to wander some shopping streets we had yet to visit and popped into a Starbucks yo use the toilet (we were not going to come all this way to get a Latte but Chinese toilets take some practise and these practises are not suitable for a blog about food). It was the first time in a week that we had been surrounded by white people. It was a little strange but quite amusing to see that everyone would nod and smile at one another just because for the first time we were all a minority banded together by an intenationally recognisable coffee chain. In the queue for the toilets some Amereican students who were studying in Beijing began chatting to us and when we had exchanged where we were from one said, "Yeah for the first few months here every time I saw another white person I thought 'there's another American'. It's hard to believe there are countries outside of America." At least there was one person in Beijing guranteed to be more culturally ignorant than us.
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