Post by Raoul Duke on May 29, 2005 23:29:28 GMT 7
I ate dinner tonight as I usually do, in a little neighborhood restaurant down wit de homeys.
The people here are especially nice to me. A little too nice, in fact...to the point where I can't ever go there and just have a nice peaceful dinner. Every meal there is a really advanced Chinese lesson. But they are kind folks and they do try hard to make me feel welcome.
Tonight I went especially late. As I was eating, the two managers and the head chef sat at a nearby table, eating snacks and drinking baijiu. This was the especially cheap baijiu...it was in a big plastic bottle I had thought was a bottle of cooking oil.
As I got up to leave, they waved me over to the empty chair at their table. One of them extended one of the expensive cigarettes he always plies me with when I go there. I didn't really want to head home again yet anyway, so I sat. I smoked the cigarette but when the baijiu was offered I waved it away and stuck to the Pepsi Light I'd nursed through my dinner.
After we talked a while (if you call it that, given my poor Chinese and their thick SuBei- northern Jiangsu- accents) I figured, what the hell. I extended an idle teacup and asked them to pour me just a little of the baijiu. Cigarette man poured about 2 shots into the cup for me.
I toasted their health, touched their glasses with mine, and drained about half of my cup. When I started making the horrible pained expressions and convulsions that inevitably accompany the taste of cheap baijiu, my companions tossed me a pair of unused chopsticks and gestured frantically at the plate of fried salted redskin peanuts sitting on the table. I picked up a couple and popped them into my mouth.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the combination of tastes was pretty good!
It was a taste one could become accustomed to without too much effort.
I left after my original 2-shot cup, but I'm scared. This grade of baijiu, and peanuts, are cheaper than dirt. I'm not sure that a tolerable drunk this cheap is a good thing.
At least there is some downside: I have the dreaded Baijiu Burps something awful.
The people here are especially nice to me. A little too nice, in fact...to the point where I can't ever go there and just have a nice peaceful dinner. Every meal there is a really advanced Chinese lesson. But they are kind folks and they do try hard to make me feel welcome.
Tonight I went especially late. As I was eating, the two managers and the head chef sat at a nearby table, eating snacks and drinking baijiu. This was the especially cheap baijiu...it was in a big plastic bottle I had thought was a bottle of cooking oil.
As I got up to leave, they waved me over to the empty chair at their table. One of them extended one of the expensive cigarettes he always plies me with when I go there. I didn't really want to head home again yet anyway, so I sat. I smoked the cigarette but when the baijiu was offered I waved it away and stuck to the Pepsi Light I'd nursed through my dinner.
After we talked a while (if you call it that, given my poor Chinese and their thick SuBei- northern Jiangsu- accents) I figured, what the hell. I extended an idle teacup and asked them to pour me just a little of the baijiu. Cigarette man poured about 2 shots into the cup for me.
I toasted their health, touched their glasses with mine, and drained about half of my cup. When I started making the horrible pained expressions and convulsions that inevitably accompany the taste of cheap baijiu, my companions tossed me a pair of unused chopsticks and gestured frantically at the plate of fried salted redskin peanuts sitting on the table. I picked up a couple and popped them into my mouth.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the combination of tastes was pretty good!
It was a taste one could become accustomed to without too much effort.I left after my original 2-shot cup, but I'm scared. This grade of baijiu, and peanuts, are cheaper than dirt. I'm not sure that a tolerable drunk this cheap is a good thing.
At least there is some downside: I have the dreaded Baijiu Burps something awful.
