Four Weeks in China, Still Can't Order Food

Today was perhaps the lowest yet in my connoisseur-ship of the local food. I had been feeling pretty good about myself since I can now recognize the character for meat. This had, until this point, made my life very much better--considering that every meal was now certain to contain some portion of a dead animal. However, I have also discovered that in China, false advertising is an art form, much like calligraphy and poetry. Indeed these arts have very much in common. For instance at lunch this afternoon, I found that although the menu listed the precious character for meat in the name of the dish I ordered , the actual dish itself only contained a metaphor for meat.
Generally for breakfast here, I do nothing extravagant. Some bread, some meat in bread, some bread in meat, these sorts of things often suffice. While this may be convenient and a blessing--I am not often good at functioning before 8 in the morning--it means that when lunch time comes trotting around with a happy meat-filled smile on its face, I am well disposed to greet him.
Today was no exception. I found myself a restaurant nearby which I had not yet frequented (my philosophy being that I must try at least one new restaurant every day). This place, while slightly on the seedy side, promised to have good food, what you might call "food which puts meat on yer bones." There were many locals of the sort who looked like they had recently come from some form or other of manual labor and were more than willing to murder a dish--and those which had eaten all looked quite content. My hopes were high.
Casting my famished eye over the menu, I hungrily looked for my favorite character. I saw the little bugger in not one or two, but more than eight places! This was somewhat like an archaeologist, who while looking for some tiny fragments of an ancient Indian jar, finds himself a whole potter's factory well preserved. At the risk of incurring a bit of criticism from those of you who think I am too cheap, I will admit to choosing the cheapest of the dishes which had meat in it. This might have been where I went wrong.
Standing next to the counter where the chef prepares your meal, I watched as he served up dish after dish which was practically a butcher's shop of various animal flesh. There was the meat stew with rice noodles, the meat baozi with meat topping, the meat with meat on the side to ensure a maximum of meat. And then there was my dish.
They gave me a large plate, I will not call them stingy when it comes to the flatware account, however the meat, at first glance seemed to have been forgotten. I couldn't be sure of this since the dish consisted of a mountain of rise in the middle, formed like an upside down bowl, and then drowned in a thick red goop. The thick red goop, I surmised must at some point have been a product related to meat. That or the menu lied. I took my dish without complaint, for let the buyer beware you know. Sitting down with it, I began to discover the intricacies of poeticism in Chinese menus.
First of all, by meat they had intended to create the sense or tone, if you will, of a what it feels like to be meat. The red goop is exactly how I picture the feelings of a cow. He wanders around in the world and the best way for him to describe it is, of course, "what a bunch of red goop" or perhaps "My goodness, isn't this world red and goopy?" Unfortunately for my taste buds the red goop lacked what you might call flavor. Except for the occasional, and exceptionally large chunk of ginger (which brought a very undesirable burst of flavor) the red goop pretty much tasted like a cow's life must feel: without event. The rice actually had a little more flavor than the red goop. Although that may only have been some residual effects of a ginger overload. Not at all what I might call a successful culinary expedition.

However things after this promised to look up. For dinner I planned to go to a Guang Dong restaurant which purported to serve a delicious duck. I am a particular lover of duck, mainly because it is meat, but also because it is especially good tasting meat. Yet again however, my ordering skills or the poetical elements of Chinese menus proved to serve me wrongly.
After some confusion in the ordering process which involved me saying the words for duck in various tones and pointing at random to the character for duck on their menu, the nice waitress nodded and hollered something in a harsh voice back to the cook. This something sounded nothing like what I thought the characters should have sounded like. But I put this down to some form of local accent (of which there are plenty in this area).
Upon the arrival of the duck, however, I was forced to rethink my more lenient approach. This seemed yet again to be a devious device of a Chinese menu or some other sort of miscommunication, deliberate or otherwise. I have always felt that when a person orders a dish with the name of a certain animal in it, that dish should mostly contain the flesh-like and edible portions of said animal. In this case however, it seems that they desired to be rid of some of the less desirable portions of the duck. I did not, as you might have thought get the thighs. I did not get the neck or the back with its plentiful bounty of meat. Nor did I even receive the feet (which parts I assure you would have had more meat on them than the portion alloted to me). Rather, the gods of the Chinese menu system, in their artfulness, gave me that portion of the duck which rhymed in taste with meat, but lacked all of its more nourishing properties. I am still uncertain as to the specific portions which I ate, but I have narrowed it down to the fat beneath the belly and all those other noodle-like things which are in that vicinity, or something which was never on the duck in the first place.
This was not a happy experience. But into each life...
Food here still is, in my mind, better than food most other places, even if you have the occasional misadventure.
Phil.