24 October 2012

Hello Family and Friends,

We have had quite a few official Chinese dinners. They are unique and different from a Canadian-style meal.
While on our tour, the style was similar at the restaurants. I call them Lazy Susan Dinners and others call them Spinner Dinners.

Eight to ten people sit at a round table, which always has a tablecloth. The table has a large rotating raised centre, which I have always called a lazy Susan. Each place is set with a small plate, a soup bowl with a spoon, a teacup and saucer and chop sticks, usually on a little stand or rest. Then dishes are brought to the table and placed on the middle of the table. These are usually not brought all at once and it can take 20 minutes to have all the dishes assembled. You are full and they are still bringing more dishes. Often the soup comes last. The idea is to share the various dishes by rotating the lazy Susan. The dishes are usually delicious and I especially enjoy the vegetable dishes. We have had a great variety and the meat dishes have included: pork, beef, lamb, goose, chicken, fish, seafood, duck, eel…… Once on the Northwest tour we had a meal prepared at a wok, next to the table, and the dish of vegetables and meat was cooked by adding steaming stones about the size of a child's hand. Some of my favourite dishes have been cabbage, pumpkin and celery dishes and also a scrambled egg with tomato dish. The fried rice is always great and the dishes are always presented beautifully.

I am not very good at this style of eating.
For one thing, my chop stick use is still terrible and I usually resort to the soup spoon. This could be very poor manners but you get hungry eventually. For another thing, it seems that no matter how polite you are trying to be, that you are vying with each other for the food. It will take some more getting used to. I can see why this is a good system because you never have to bother with passing anything. It is just different. Maybe you had to know what Mom was like to appreciate my discomfort.


Good bye for now,
I will send a picture later.
I thought that I had one.