Friday, May 20th

China – week 2         Qingdao – week 1

Now that we’re settled in at Qingdao University, we don’t eat most meals as a group.  Instead, we have a meal stipend to use on campus or around town.

Perhaps this is a good place note the importance of food safety.  In China, food sanitation is a hot topic of concern.  Public water itself is not safe to drink unless boiled.  Refrigeration seems to be reserved for ice cream here so unless food is fresh and properly cooked there’s a good chance it will make you sick.

My main eating goal while in Qingdao is simple: avoid eating at the 7-11 in the dorm building.  The food is more convenient than delicious, questionably safe to eat, and well, I didn’t come to China (aka the land of affordable dinning) to eat at a convenience store!  Also, seeking food gives me a reason to get off campus, try something new, or at least practice my Chinese since I have yet to meet a food service worker in Qingdao who’s volunteered their English skills.

Although we’ve had many successful dinning experiences before and since, let me tell you about one dinner this week that was a real struggle.

Daniel and I, who both have a passible Chinese vocabulary and listening comprehension level necessary for most restaurants, decided to go find dinner.  However, we don’t have a place in mind so we just stroll into the first legitimate-looking restaurant we pass.  We go in, and the meal unfolds something like this: (note: all conversations with the wait staff were in Chinese)

Us: “Two people”

Waiter: “Right here.” (he directs us to a table.  However, it has a half-eaten fish on it and only one chair.)

Us: “umm….”

Waiter: “Follow me.”  (He leads us back in the restaurant to a alcove displaying a large array of dishes, baskets of raw shellfish, and fish tanks.  It’s the stereotypical foreign restaurant horrific display: live fish, raw seafood, and front-and-center a dish that displays a raw chopped up chicken complete with head and feet.  ….I should also mention that Daniel is vegan.)

Me to the waiter: “Sorry… but what should we do??”  (I say this knowing full well he’ll probably say something way beyond my ability to comprehend, but I really had no idea.)

As expected, we barely understand a word of his response.  The next step, I’ve found, is to ask yes or no questions based on whatever snippets we’ve understood until we can piece it together.  So, after panicking a little bit, looking up some words, and making a few false starts, we ask if we should pick something and they will cook it for us and discover that yes, this is the case (in retrospect, we literally described a menu…)  Despite the full restaurant, all the while our waiter patiently waits for us to figure things out/choose our food and answers our questions while the rest of the restaurant staff look on curiously.  He only laughed once.

Daniel to me (panicking): “Uhhh…. you order first since you can eat anything.”  (Looking around, I am not sure that this is the case.  I don’t even know how to eat most of what’s displayed.  However, I locate a tofu dish.  Obviously a side dish, but we can’t come this far and accept defeat outright.)

Me to the waiter: “We’ll have this one”

Waiter: “You want one each?”

Me: “No, we’ll share.”

And so we ate our bland cold tofu in a fancy restaurant full people enjoying complicated-to-eat seafood.  At one point we watched someone order a live fish.  They pointed to the one they wanted, and the waiter (stepping on the divider of two bins of sea creatures as there was no path to the tank) scooped up the fish in a net and, without warning, slapped it hard against the nearest wall a few times.  I opted to stop watching at this point, then realized my alternative was to watch a vegan watch a fish getting beaten.  Yeah, time to go.  We’ll bring a native that can show us what to do next time.

Not satisfied with our meager dinner and needing a way to redeem the evening, we decided to find a coffee shop and order some nice drinks and snacks.  Unfortunately, (though charming) every Chinese coffee shop I’ve visited, including the one we found, thinks it’s cute to put their menu in hand-written Chinese characters (no pictures, literally impossible to read).  It took us what felt like an eternity talking with the lady to figure out what was on the menu and to order.  The length of every Chinese person’s patience with foreigners really amazes me.

In the end we apparently ordered hot chocolate, tiramisu, and coffee.  Delicious, but still not dinner.  So, I reached that point.  I was tired of navigating complex discussions in Chinese about food I didn’t understand, and I just wanted dinner.  Yes, I reached that point of ordering a sandwich from McDonalds.  I’m not proud.  Simple, familiar, predictable, no discussion (though I almost lost it when she asked if I wanted it “for here or to go”.  Luckily Daniel was paying attention.)  It tasted like defeat, but undeniably delicious.

While I ate my Filet-O-Fish-Of-Shame we sat down to watch a large group of old people ballroom dancing in the plaza (pretty common, actually).  Almost as soon as we sat down an old man joined us and started chatting us up.  Very random, but finally a chance to use our mandarin in the way we’d been trained the best, small talk!  hah!

On the way back to campus I impulse-bought a half-kilo of fresh cherries (also something my Chinese textbook adequately prepared me for) which somewhat redeemed the evening as well.

So, that’s the story of my most desperate attempt to date to avoid eating at 7-11.

I didn’t take any pictures except this mural of Patrick and SpongeBob that we passed on the way back to campus.  I will do better at providing illustrations next time.