VIP Hot Pot Adventures

So far every dining experience I've had in China has been very different and I was not let down tonight!

There are many restaurants around my apartment so I've been slowly making my way to each of them. Well, that is if they have a picture menu right now :) There is another girl working for the company named Bell who I have eaten with around my apartment a few times and then I have gone by myself a few times. Since St. Patrick's day was yesterday, I think everyone was lying low tonight
so I decided to go eat by myself. The hardest thing about China for me is being inconspicuous. I was pretty tired from St. Patrick's day on Thursday and then teaching all day on Friday so I sort of just wanted to have a quiet meal, but alas it was not meant to be...!

I never even noticed this restaurant before but it was literally a 2 minute walk from my apartment. The windows are sort of foggy from the hot pot so that might be why I never noticed it. Well, I saw they had some pictures up on the wall and some fish tanks so I decided to give it a try. Dalian is known for its seafood so I have been trying to eat a lot of fish. Well, no dice with the fish in the fish tanks (after standing in front of the fish tanks for a while and me trying to explain that I wanted to eat one and laughing at some of the fish there this one guy finally shouts, Sashimi! So i was like oh, you're not going to cook it for me? They go no, no, no cook! They let me stand there and look at the fish tank for like 10 minutes when they had no intention of making fish for me. All they had to do was tell me not to go to the fish tank. From what I've seen and heard, withholding information like this is a very Chinese thing to do.) but I got hot pot and it was awesome! Hot pot is essentially what it sounds like- it's very hot soup in a pot (they keep it boiling) and you throw in your meat and vegetables to cook them.


The staff there was soooo nice and patient with me. And for once, they spoke a little bit of English! I sat down and went over the menu with 3 of them for like 5 minutes, then we went to the fish tanks for another 5 or 10 minutes, then back to the menu for another 5 lol. The staff did a good job helping me pick out my dishes though because this was definitely one of the best meals that I've had here so far. It really doesn't work just picking random things off the menu...I've had some really poor tasting food here. However, as you can imagine, there was a lot of laughing and miscommunication while we were figuring it out. They thought I wanted pretty much everything we went over so I got way more food than I was planning on. I had a spicy soup with shrimp ball things, mussels (they tasted so good), tofu, a special oyster that didn't go in the soup (it was expensive so they just let me get one to try) and a few little tasting dishes. It was A LOT! Lesson 1- go over what you've ordered with them even if you think they understand! Even with all the excess food it was not very expensive by American standards though- $12. However, that is the most money I have paid for a meal here so that is a lot of money. I didn't get upset about the miscommunication though because I learned a lesson from it, I got to try a lot of different food, and the people there were so nice I think they deserved it all! There is no tipping here so even for all that great service I was not able to tip them.


Anyways, I have been a little intimidated with some of the hot pot kind of stuff because I don't know exactly how to do everything to eat it properly, what goes with what, etc. It sort of reminds me of the first time I had Korean bbq- there are so many different little dishes and there is a certain way you are supposed to eat the bbq which you just have to learn. Well, it turned out that my only option at this restaurant was hot pot so I figured that I would just have to go with it! And it just happened that I picked the perfect place to do this at because one of the waiters literally stayed with me at my table almost for my entire meal, even though I tried to tell him to go haha. He showed me how to cook the meats and what sauces to use. He brought out one sauce from the back and told me it was the restaurant's specialty and that it was a free present :) They brought other random stuff out that I didn't ask for as well, like a small glass of hawthorne juice and a small plate of fruit with cherry tomatoes (?!?) for desert which they had stuck toothpicks in with little streamers attached to them...hahah oh my god I was dying when I saw that. I'm pretty sure those probably were not free and I didn't necessarily need/want them but I wasn't sure how to politely refuse them and figured they would be very cheap. Plus, I wasn't 100% sure that they weren't free so that could have been rude. They went to all that trouble with the fruit dish....hahah it still cracks me up. I will talk to the Chinese women in the office and see what I should have done in that situation for next time. I know they were just trying to find things that I would like or might want to try and were not trying to rack up my tab so that was another reason I didn't say anything.


Anyways, so while I'm eating the waiter is trying to talk to me and is preparing the food and serving it to me. I was there for over an hour, and he was standing there cooking my food for me almost the entire time. It was nice, but they definitely were not doing that for anyone else in the restaurant so I felt bad. I told him that he didn't have to do that and he said that it was his pleasure, he was so nice. It was really helpful though because it would have been a little hard with my hand to do all that needed to be done. I tried to get him to eat some because it was too much for me and he was just standing there but he wouldn't eat any. He left for a little bit and came back with this card and an application. He said it was a VIP card that can get me discounts at the restaurant...oh my god I was like are you for real! I love that he barely speaks English and knows the acronym VIP. They probably think I'm a big spender or something after tonight. At first I thought he was going to want me to put some money on the card or something because I know they do that to get discounts at hair salons here so I was a little uncomfortable at first but they didn't ask for any money so I think it really is just a little discount card. When I was filling out the application (all it was was name, sex, DOB and phone number) I did my birthday in the wrong order (they start with the year here) so two of the waiters died laughing because I put 02 as the year I was born...which would make me what, 9 years old? LOL. I was also telling him some English and he was telling me some Chinese so it was mutually beneficial.

In the middle of the meal a couple sat down next to me that spoke much better English than the waiter so they helped do a little translation. They were incredibly nice too and didn't seem to mind the fact that we were interrupting their meal together. The girl said that the staff thought I was very nice and very brave. I loved those people, I definitely plan on going back there!

Wow, okay this turned out way longer than I expected. There is just so much thinking and interpretation required for me to operate in China right now so I like to ponder it...more to come!