Edible Pandies

Edible Pandies –

My first visit to China - part three

When you travel to a new country there typically is a language barrier.  For me, anywhere I travel there is a language barrier.  Sometimes just a slight difference in accent is enough for my ears not to understand what was just said.  Eight years ago my wife and I took the kids across Canada on a long vacation. On a few occasions my kids had to translate the Canadian accent to me.  They would look directly at me, hold my face in their hands and slowly repeat the English I had just heard from the English speaking Canadian.  I would nod my head like I understood, then shut up and go sit in the corner.   Verbal communication can be a challenge to me, yet I have somehow managed to stay employed for three decades by verbally communicating with people.  It is a good thing I have smart clients.  Or maybe there is a benefit to me being a manly hunk of eye candy.  OK, it must be the smart clients.

When I visit a new country it is common for me to have a meal with whom I am there to see. This trip was no different.  On my first day in China I ate a late lunch with the fellows that my company has partnered up with.   I was starving.  It was after 6pm and I had not eaten since breakfast.   The director of that company, Mr. Chen, could understand no English and, as mentioned above, rarely can I.  So Jack, our trusty interpreter, had a tough job.   Mr. Chen was doing his best to find common ground between us.  We spoke of our families and a few other topics.  I gathered from this that he was married to an automobile and has a son with two noses.  Or maybe not.

Mr. Chen told me a little about this region of China.  He babbled on for a moment or two.  Then jack explained what he said.  Part of it was this:

Mr. Chen:  “Near this city is the area which is famous for the Giant Pandas.  Do you like Pandas?”

Bill:  “Yes, I think they are delicious”

Mr. Chen did not seem to appreciate this comment.  Jack must have said something inappropriate.

The waitress brought out several bowls of steaming dishes to the table.  I followed my host’s lead, and un-wrapped my chop sticks.  I have used chop sticks before and to me it just seems silly for a culture to keep using these things after knives and forks were invented.  Western eating utensils, in my humble opinion, expedite the food - to - mouth process more efficiently than using tapered sticks. 

I tried to use the chopsticks to grab bits of food from the nearest serving bowl.  I had no idea what it was but my growling stomach told me to eat it.  They watched in amusement as I repeatedly chased that portion of food around in the dish with no success.  This went on for several, long, awkward moments.  Now I know why Asians are slender.  There are only 24 hours in a day and this method of eating could consume most of that time and still not give me enough nourishment to fuel a game of tic-tac-toe.

By the end of the week, however, my host remarked that I had become much more proficient at using chopsticks.  He wanted to know how I learned so fast.  I told him it was simple.  Starvation is a great motivator.

There are two things that really don’t set well with me with this culture’s dining behavior. The first is that they use their chopsticks to grab food out of the communal bowl, then put the food directly in to their mouth.  Then they repeat the process over and over again.  I began to fixate on them sticking the chopsticks in their mouths then putting them back in to the food dish.  I tried to remember the spot where I had seen them grab food from and avoid it when it was my turn to pick from the serving bowl.  But that was a losing battle.   I could not stop obsessing about the germs leaping from their mouths to the sticks, then to the serving bowl.  I felt like I was eating out of a giant petrie dish of contamination.  

The second cultural meal time trait which I found irritating was the tiny size of their napkins.  Since I was eating with tapered sticks instead of a fork, the food tended to get away from me during the transit from the bowl to my mouth.  I had to rapidly stuff the food pieces in to my mouth before it has a chance to escape my grasp.  I ended up with as much food on my face as in my mouth.  So using these postage stamp size napkins was a bit frustrating.  I had to use a whole handful of them in order to stay tidy. 

So, that was pretty much my first day in China.  Pretty riveting stuff, I know.  And it will make my wife happy to read this.  She is always afraid I will inadvertently cause some international incident and she will see me on CNN standing in front of a firing squad.  Why would the Chinese want to do that to me?  I love their favorite animal.  I hear they are delicious.