The Year of the Tiger

Tonight four of us went out to a nice restaurant for hot pot, Yulin style. This time the pot in the center of the table was heated by a gas burner underneath, unlike the one in Beijing. It was divided in two, and both sides contained water flavored by a mix of spices, some recognizable (slices of ginger) and some not. One side was mild-flavored, the other spicy hot, with lots of little red peppers floating around in it.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that in nicer restaurants, the wait staff (whether one person or several, like tonight) stands by the table while you peruse the menu and decide what to order. Tonight we had three foreigners (besides Jamie and me there was Marien, who is from the Netherlands and teaches English here) and Jingjing, who is from Yulin and is a senior English major at the university.

The head waiter gave us a sheet of paper with dozens of things to choose from that we would eventually cook in the hot pot, and with Jingjing facilitating we chose:

mushrooms
beef (very thin slices)
mutton (ditto)
tofu
lettuce
potato slices
sweet potato slices (but pale, not like ours)
2 kinds of noodles (lucky, for birthday celebrations)
fish balls
quail eggs
chicken eggs

We were each given a small bowl with a peanuty sauce in it, plus there were little plates of condiments to add to the sauce: chopped cilantro, chopped scallions (or something similar), a red sauce, and a green sauce. We also added some broth from both sides of the hot pot to our dipping bowls and stirred everything together.

Tea was brought (which is only automatic in nicer restaurants, oddly enough given the custom in Chinese restaurants at home), and we also had Sprite and beer.

The items we had ordered came several at a time, and we put two or three kinds of things in the hot pot at once. One kind of noodle looked like spaghetti (but didn't taste like it), and one was a translucent, wide, flat, chewy potato-based noodle that I’ve been fed a bunch of times here and like a lot. Noodles were saved for next to last, just before the chicken eggs.

As you can imagine, this meal went on for a long time, until we were all too full for another bite.

Back outside, for the first time since I’ve been here we didn’t get a cab right away. Every cab that went by already had someone in it, and although there’s a shortage of cabs here, so they often pick up a second fare when they’ve already got a first one, with four of us only an empty cab would have stopped. We finally gave up, and Marien and Jamie started to walk back to campus on the assumption that Jingjing and I would get a cab more easily by ourselves. And then, of course, one came along immediately, and we had the driver pick up Jamie and Marien as well.

Back at Jamie’s apartment -- cake and ice cream. :) The bakery had provided a gizmo that opened up into a Chinese lotus flower with a little candle on each petal, and played a tinny “Happy Birthday.” Jingjing added a Chinese verse to the singing, and a good time was had by all.

There are pictures, but they’re not on my camera, so I’ll have to wait to post them.