SLURP, SMACK, SNEEZE, SPIT, BURB, AND SNOTTER.
When entering a restaurant, hearing and seeing all these noises and sounds of great comfort and pleasure, you know you’re in the right place to be! Because Chinese people love to let other customers know that the food is really delicious. All the things we learned in the West concerning great table-manners you can skip right away. You don’t have to worry which fork and knife you have to use to match the course of the menu because people eat with chopsticks, and one eats with everyone out of the same pots and pans that are placed on this big round glass rotating disc. When you have a problem how to handle chop sticks, and try to grab on to some meat or something slippery like fish while somebody on the other side of the table starts to turn the disc you are in big trouble. Don’t worry, there is a solution! You can use the small plate or bowl in front of you, but that shows you are not a master chopstick eater and that you have a real bad technique. Also the menu is long with a lot of choices. Choices we could never make in the West. All the standard Chinese courses known in the West are not to be found, they have different names and taste much better. The menu gives you beautiful colour pictures of the courses when you can’t make your choice, or can’t read the menu. But be careful Westerners! What looks like beef can be pig guts. Chinese don’t like to waste anything and eat therefore everything. So it happened that I coincidentally ate some parts of animals I would have never tried at home. Like pig tongue ( Chinese believe by eating this, they become very eloquent speakers), not bad. Pig-neck, pig-feet, frogs, waterlily( super!), and much more. If you really show you are freaked out by eating this, give a big burb! Do you find something in your mouth that feels uncomfortable, like chicken-bone, just spit it out and wipe it under your dish. When the food is too spicy and your nose starts running, snotter and blow your nose; tissues are all over the table. Suck the noodles out of the bowl while you slurp the soup. Great fun and everything tastes great. The great advantage Chinese people have to us ( not to me, but in general) is that they are absolutely not disturbed or irritated by other people’s behaviour, and I like them for that. I bought a Chinese cookbook, I am sure I’m going to use it for the rest of my life. Wim