Although China is and always will be my holiday destination of choice, sometimes a woman just has to take a leap into the great unknown - into, for example, Memphis, Tennessee and Dodge City, Kansas.
We middle-aged people tend to become creatures of habit, though; we dislike things that are just too unknown. So I decided to visit every Chinese restaurant in the United States between New York and San Francisco and vacuum my way through the menus in every one of them. Not very ambitious, I know, but I needed to keep my Canto-roots watered, as it were.
There's no denying, though, it has been something of a culture shock. I see Chinese people eating with forks - if you want chopsticks you have to ask for them. They don't give you a bowl either, unless you ask for it, and even Chinese people eat Chinese food off plates! Every restaurant sports Chinese horoscopes on paper table mats: "Rat. You enjoy breathing and embroidery. Stay away from Tigers."
Instead of tea, you're served a colossal glass of water with enough ice to freeze portions of the Missouri river. And, speaking of portions, like all the other meals I've eaten in this country there's enough food in each Chinese dish to feed a moderately hungry family of 12. Americans, it seems, eat like each meal is their last.
In Philadelphia we had fantastic dim sum at the Joy Tsin Lau restaurant, whose owner is a former Cantonese opera singer. There, all the waiters spoke proper Cantonese, not just "survival Cantonese learnt in the USA by person from Fujian". We were dining with M, an American of Korean descent, and naturally the waiters spoke to her (she doesn't even speak a word of Korean, let alone Chinese) instead of me. However, when they saw her using chopsticks as if they were a knife and fork they relented and reluctantly accepted my linguistic supremacy.