The Dinner

The Dinner

We went to Project 2 with Yong, where we met Mr. and Mrs. Liu for dinner with Liu's Aunt and her son, his 20-somthing cousin, Alex. Alex and his aunt run the amplifier production operations and the restaurant.

We went upstairs in the new restaurant, which serves the factory's managers, and as soon as they get a license any day now, the general public. In a private dining room with a poster of a heavy-metal guitar on one wall and a piano with a rose in it's keys on another, we sat down to dinner as the guests of honor. Mr. Liu offered me wine, then some wine, then some wine again. Finally, he just poured me some wine, which I used for toasting. Pretty, neatly uniformed waitresses started bringing in food. Cucumbers in one dish, bowel in another, tofu, flowers, something gray that looked like money, something I couldn't chew. The middle of the table turns, as you take some food off a dish, you, or someone else, turns the table. The table filled up with dishes of food, then they started stacking. I was very aware of being the guest of honor, so I made sure I tried everything. I stared down some unbeheaded chicken, and stuffed some in my pie hole using my rapidly improving chopstick dexterity. Considering what else was on the table, I wasn't too worried about the Chicken, which doubled my suprise when I discovered after getting some in my mouth, that it was loaded with shattered razor-bones. The razor-bones in my mouth rendered me mute for a moment, which was a shame, because as soon as I took some of the chicken, the table turned, Sarah took a hunk and stuck it in her mouth, and I was unable to warn her. Shrimp covered with oranges. Flat noodles. Egg tomato soup. Dumplings.