In these pictures, you will see different ways how the table is set in China compared to the US. Food is cut up in small pieces so chopsticks can be used. Using a Lazy Susan to pass the food around instead of doing it by hand. Also when fish, duck, chicken, some things like this are served the head and tail will be left on. Also, chicken's feet will be served on a plate. I could never see what the Chinese saw in eating chicken’s feet. I think something is wrong with them-the Chinese-not the chicken’s feet. Instead of having desert like we do in the US, the last dish that is served in China is fruit. Watermelon, apples, bananas, and other fruit will be sliced up.
There are usually six or eight cold dishes put on the table to start with. In the US, we may look at them in place of salads or they could be considered appetizers. Of course, no silverware just chopsticks.
What? Don’t ask. I can’t remember the names of the food, just eat it. It’s good for you. No, it’s not going to kill you. It’s healthy. That’s what I was always told anyway. If you ask what it is and find out, you may regret asking. Eat and quit asking questions.
Mmmmmm. That looks so good. Rice, chicken, vegetables, soups and so many other great Chinese foods.
In these pictures, someone that has never been to China, or has never eaten Chinese food may question what the different foods are and they may say “should I eat this or not”? Yes, it may look strange but it is all good and safe to eat. You may have to look at it this way; more than 1.3 billion people in China eat this food and they live to see another day. You can always ask what the food is but sometimes you may not want to know or you may regret asking. Just eat it and shut up. There are so many dishes here of great food. Like my colleague Mary would say, “it makes my mouth water”. Yes it does Mary.
This is Ms. Wei’s kitchen. This was during the Chinese New Year Festival. There was more than this also. The big round plate to the right is full of dumplings (jiaozi). If you are wondering what some of these things are; there are mushrooms, beef, meatballs, cucumbers, lotus root and chicken. There are a couple of the plates that I can’t tell what is on them. And there is rice in the orange rice cooker.
A closer look at the dumplings.
The head and tail are left on the fish. When most foreigners first see a fish with the head and tail on or a duck with the head on, it catches them off guard and is surprising. It does bother some of them to eat it with the tail and head left on. Maybe it bothers them when they see the fish looking at them while they are eating it. We don’t do this in the US so people aren’t used to it. By the way, you also use chopsticks when you eat the fish and pick the meat off and you need to be careful of the bones.
This became one of my favorite dishes. I would pick it up from one of the small restaurants between the school and my apartment. This is Nurou Gai Zhao Mian. There is beef, onions, peppers and noodles in this food. It is so very good.
These three pictures show you a fancy way to pour tea.
Get one of these teapots with the long spouts and see if you can impress your guests with your tea pouring skills and then let them have a try. Maybe you should have a mop close by.
One time when I was eating with friends, this girl was our waitress. Notice how tall she is. I am 5 ft. 10 inches and she is a little more. She must have been 6 ft. She was the tallest waitress that I saw during my time in China.
Like anywhere in any restaurant, they put up with a lot dealing with the public. People that are upset with something, the silverware or chopsticks, dirty plates or glasses, the food isn’t right, the server brought the wrong dressing for your salad, whatever it may be. I’m sure the workers could tell all kinds of stories.
From my experience in China, the waiters and waitresses there work hard like anywhere. Because of the numbers of diners, there are many servers. There could be two to four servers bringing things to your table. There may be one main server at the table while others bring the food. The one server is always close and may watch over a couple of tables or more. He or she is responsible for things to be right.
Many restaurants and hotels will have ladies dressed up in a Qipao, the traditional Chinese dress, who open the doors for you and greets you. I have seen anywhere from two to six ladies at the doors. One of them, a hostess, will take you to a table or a private room.
Another thing that is different there than here is that here everyone gets a menu whereas in China, sometimes one person will order the dishes or they will talk it over and then decide on what dishes to order.
This is a good place to mention tipping. I have heard that there is tipping. Maybe in the bigger cities. But the majority of the time when you go to a restaurant, you don't tip. Who would you tip? If you have two to four servers, who do you tip? I doubt that you would tip all of them. They don't expect it, I'm sure they would like to be tipped. They deserve to be tipped like anyone.
We do not have hotpot in the US. If we did, I don’t think Americans would have the patience to wait for the food to cook. This is one of those things where you have to be patient. It's not that it takes a long time to cook, it’s that you put food in the pot piece by piece, let it cook and you take it out and eat it. And when there are many of you eating, you have to be patient and take your turn.
Hotpot restaurants are favorite places to go to, especially when it is cold outside. There are different ways to have this. You sit at a round table, maybe up to ten people. In the middle of the table is a hole. Under the table, where the hole is, is a twenty-five pound propane tank that is connected to a heating element that heats a pot that is full of liquid that sits on top of the hole. The liquid has ingredients in it to give the food more flavor. The food that is put into the pot is all cut up into small thin pieces so it cooks quickly. You can order whatever you want, either a few or many dishes. Each food is different for cooking time. The thin pieces of meat may take only thirty seconds. Potatoes and other things may take several minutes.
Sometimes the pot has a divider in the middle so on one side it is spicy and the other side is not. Some restaurants have individual hotpots. These are small and they sit on individual electric heaters in front of the person. Each person cooks their own. I got used to eating hotpot. I learned to tell when the food was cooked although the people that I would eat with would usually tell me when it was ready so that helped.
The first year when I was in Luoyang, I was taken out for hotpot eight times in two weeks. I did get a little tired of it because it was so many times but I enjoyed it over the years I was there. There was one kind of hotpot restaurant that was different than the rest that I ate at. One time, I went with Ms. Wei to a Beijing style restaurant and I really liked that.
The meat is beef cut very thin. The two dishes at the bottom of the picture are sauces that you can dip the different kinds of food in to add flavor.
Some foods cooking
Above is seaweed. In case it doesn’t look good to you, just remember that everybody eats it so it must be good and safe to eat. That’s how I look at it.
Lotus root
This restaurant has individual hotpots. Look close at the tables and you will see them, they are the gold containers sitting in front of each person. On the right are blue carts. That is what the food is brought out on.
You can see the meat on the plates and the seasonings in the small dishes. The round glass on the table is common in China. In the US, we would call it a Lazy Susan. You put the food on there and turn it so the food is passed that way and you pick the food up with chopsticks. The plates are not passed individually like we do in the US.
The top dish is a fish. Whenever fish is served in China, the head and tail are included. I can't remember what the one on the left is. It’s good, just eat it. The dish on the right is potatoes.
This is at Emily’s (Li Xiao) place. You can see more of the different foods that are used for hotpot. This pot is an electric one. Besides the meat, there is lettuce, potatoes, tofu, cauliflower and shrimp. The plate with oranges and bananas are not for the hotpot, they are dessert. In China, the last thing that is brought out is a plate of fruit. We would consider that dessert. They do not have desserts like we do in the US.
Many things cooking at once in the pot. The dishes above the hotpot starting with the left one is tofu, the middle one is some kind of noodle and the dish on the right is potatoes.
Here’s a hotpot restaurant that had another way of doing it. The cooks would put the raw food on the small plates, cover them and put them on the conveyer so the food would go between the booths where people were sitting and they would take the ones off that they wanted. The silver container on the right is the hotpot. It is sitting on an electric burner.
Mary and Kim (Xue Lian)
This is some of the food that we chose. You put the food in the hotpot, let it cook and then eat.
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