Notes from a restaurant
[I’m at a restaurant, waiting to get my ‘to go’ food, I wrote this in my journal there.]
21 men and one woman at a large table. Only one more table remains in the room, although there is additional seating upstairs. None of them stare at me as I quietly sit and wait for my food. The waitresses’ outfits are long sleeve red shirts with denim overalls. Unusual. “Hey Jude”, the muzak version [no lyrics] is playing. I have come back to this neighborhood restaurant for “nan gua bing” south gourd cake- in essence, pumpkin pie filling type stuff deep fried with purple bean paste in the middle, a little larger than a double stuff oreo. A fritter I guess. The more I use Chinese, the done worser my English gets. 10 little hot cakes for $1.25, a perfect desert.
Occasionally one man will leave his seat and walk down the table and get other men to drink with them; the custom of “gan bei” or finishing the glass is gone, now they sensibly “he yi kou” or ‘drink one mouth’- just a mouthful. Probably best considering it is not yet 6 pm. They all eat a bit, then smoke a lot. I swear Chinese cigarettes smoke faster than ours, maybe that’s why they smoke so many. The woman at the table is asked to ‘gan bei’ but she is drinking water, and doesn’t drink any anyway, she just raises her glass. They are all wearing dark drab clothes and most keep their jackets on even though it is warm in here. They take no notice of me frantically recording their dinner in my journal.
As they all stand up for a toast, their voices get louder and louder. One man’s cell phone rings louder than all the voices- he answers it mid- toast. Cell phone etiquette has not yet hit China. Last week when I was at the ballet, I was seated on the balcony section of the theater, and in between acts I would look down and see half the audience’s cell phones light up, no doubt checking text messages and see whose called. My pumpkin cakes have arrived. Time to leave the 21 men to their dinner/celebration.
21 men and one woman at a large table. Only one more table remains in the room, although there is additional seating upstairs. None of them stare at me as I quietly sit and wait for my food. The waitresses’ outfits are long sleeve red shirts with denim overalls. Unusual. “Hey Jude”, the muzak version [no lyrics] is playing. I have come back to this neighborhood restaurant for “nan gua bing” south gourd cake- in essence, pumpkin pie filling type stuff deep fried with purple bean paste in the middle, a little larger than a double stuff oreo. A fritter I guess. The more I use Chinese, the done worser my English gets. 10 little hot cakes for $1.25, a perfect desert.
Occasionally one man will leave his seat and walk down the table and get other men to drink with them; the custom of “gan bei” or finishing the glass is gone, now they sensibly “he yi kou” or ‘drink one mouth’- just a mouthful. Probably best considering it is not yet 6 pm. They all eat a bit, then smoke a lot. I swear Chinese cigarettes smoke faster than ours, maybe that’s why they smoke so many. The woman at the table is asked to ‘gan bei’ but she is drinking water, and doesn’t drink any anyway, she just raises her glass. They are all wearing dark drab clothes and most keep their jackets on even though it is warm in here. They take no notice of me frantically recording their dinner in my journal.
As they all stand up for a toast, their voices get louder and louder. One man’s cell phone rings louder than all the voices- he answers it mid- toast. Cell phone etiquette has not yet hit China. Last week when I was at the ballet, I was seated on the balcony section of the theater, and in between acts I would look down and see half the audience’s cell phones light up, no doubt checking text messages and see whose called. My pumpkin cakes have arrived. Time to leave the 21 men to their dinner/celebration.
posted by Claire at 6:45 AM
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