a man of letters
things i learned during my mid-autumn festival (the fifteenth day of the eighth month by the chinese lunar calendar … usually on or close to a full moon) dinner with professor xu — a dean in my department at shanghai university — and his family at xian heng restaurant on thursday night:
* perhaps the full moon is waning in popularity. although many have told me that mid-autumn festival is “like thanksgiving,” no one has a vacation from work or school that day. many don’t do anything particularly special that day … not that eating turkey and watching football is particularly special, either.
* there are moon cakes and then there are moon cakes. you can spend a lot of money on these traditional gifts, cakes with surprisingly long shelf-lifes that come stuffed with a variety of fillings — some appetizing, some not. (no, georgians, they are nothing like moonpies.) it’s possible to receive many, many moon cakes. not sure how many actually get eaten.
* the xian hen heng restaurant was inspired by lu xun, the father of modern chinese literature. professor xu said he chose this locale special for me because “you too are a man of letters.” wow. i’ve never been called a man of letters before. sounds fancy. i think i might change my business cards.
* the guests of honor at a chinese meal should always sit facing the entrance.
* it is an insult in chinese culture to offer to pay when someone else invites you out for the meal. good thing i didn’t offer to pay.
* although my chopstick skills have improved dramatically over the past 12 months — i can eat almost anything with them and it feels almost, dare i say, natural — i rapidly regress to old form when i know my skills are being scrutinized. and on thursday i was the only foreigner in a restaurant packed with more than 500 people. that’s scrutiny. it was around one year ago that i last ate with professor xu and at times on thursday i felt as chopstick challenged as i did back then.
* i’ll never be able to stick a shrimp — head, tail, shell — in my mouth like the chinese do. never.
* professor xu wasn’t lying when he pointed to my neck and said, “we’re going to fill you up to here tonight.” dish after dish after dish. lazy susan never worked so hard. and just when i was fairly certain we were finished and i actually was filled up to my neck, another course came. an entire duck soaking in a pot of broth.
* “once a student, always a student.” that’s what my good friend johnson — one of professor xu’s former star pupils — said, explaining why he was rather nervous to join us for the meal. johnson treated mr. xu with the utmost respect, opening doors, pouring drinks, pulling out chairs, etc., etc. note to my students: you don’t need to do this for me.
* buicks are big. profesor xu’s son-in-law drove us home in his spacious buick. it was my first time riding in a privately-owned car in china. thus, it was also my first time wearing a seatbelt. i mentioned that i drove a toyota. mr. xu’s son-in-law said he would never buy a japanese car. “they never apologized for what they did to the chinese people,” he said. he is, however, contemplating a purchase of a bmw — the germans have apologized.
09.14.2003, 2:16 PM · Observations
2 Comments
I completely agree with you on the entireshrimp in mouth thing. I don’t know how they do it.
i decide to pick up another language—-german instead of japanese