I awoke around 6:30 in the morning feeling very refreshed. Dinner had been uneventful last night except for the food. It was almost inedible for the first time since I arrived here. It wasn’t for flavor, or repulsiveness, or anything like that. It was just tricky. The dinner began with a hot pot of broth as per the custom and what appeared to be a raft floating in it as if to produce a clean French consommé. However, the raft here was meant to be eaten. The pot was placed on a hot plate on the table and set to simmer. Strips of what looked like gelatinous head cheese were placed in the pot. The waiter lifted a blob of pink slime, and dollops of it were dropped into the steaming liquid. A basket-weaved plate was sat down on the table with the standard pile of fresh garden offerings. Dishes of various sauces were positioned for each one at the table, and a plate with little squares of cold, sticky noodles was sat at one end.
Now, up to this point, we’re doing ok. Tung, one of my dinner guests, insisted I try his favorite dishes. One, a small whole, naked fried chicken, only missing its head, cut into random chunks and tossed in a sweet fruity sauce. Two, a plate of little random-looking fried chicken pieces reminiscent of mini sweet and sour chicken without the sauce. Now, this is where things got weird. I popped the mini-fried nugget into my mouth without even thinking about it. I bit down and instinctually spit it into my napkin. I tried to be inconspicuous about it, and I couldn’t be sure if anyone noticed. If they did, they weren’t letting on.
Now, the fact that the conversations around continued without anything unusual and, as of yet, no one else had attempted to consume the fried bits on the plate left me with three possible conclusions. One, everything was normal, and I was stepping into rude territory. Two, I just got the one nasty piece in the batch. Or three. This was all a joke, and it was on me. So, I popped another one in and gave it a shot to test my hypothesis with some experimentation. As I did so, Tung grabbed one with his chopsticks, dipped it in the sauce, gave a nod with chopsticks high in the air, and in his best English, said “good” and popped it in his mouth at the same time as I. It felt like a challenge, and as I bit down and achieved the same result, I was forced to try my best to win this round even though my brain said give up now.
I stared at Tung as he stared back and I watched and listened as he, mouth agape made loud smacking noises as he softened up his favorite treat. I chomped down as hard as I could and, in as few bites as I could, broke up the bony piece of fried, hard chicken cartilage and slid it down my throat. Looking for something more appetizing, I grabbed the chicken foot on the plate before me and gnawed off its crispy, reptilian-like fried skin.
