Return to childhood
The longer I'm here, the more I remind myself of an eight-year-old. Every conversation, whether I'm fumbling through busted Mandarin, or a companion is gasping for English, is reminiscient of kindergarten. Which, fittingly, I will be teaching an hour every week, I just found out.
And then there's eating. The faculty dining hall is straight out of the plans for St. Rose of Lima's school cafeteria -- white tile floors, ceramic tables with permanently attached blue laminate chairs, and a slop line.
The lunchlady scoops a couple piles of rice onto my silver platter, which is exactly reminiscent of those used in American prisons. I go to the next station, where another lunchlady piles on creamofsomeyoungsomething. And the next station, and some creamofsomeyoungsomethingelse. I never know what kind of someyoungsomething it is, I just point and pray.
So far, everything has been quite edible, even tangy and spicy and enjoyable. Thanks be to God. Today, however, not so much. One mystery dish looked for all the world like beef chips. I chewed my first bite, though, and nope, not beef chips. Instead, rubbery, chewy something that, for the first time, tripped my gag reflex. On closer inspection, the "beef chips" came to resemble something of the liver/kidney genre. I am widely fed, but liver/kidney is one genre I don't do.
And so, with my chopsticks, I picked through the dish, extracting the edibles -- some kind of green onions and red peppers -- and discarding the inedible liver/kidney action. In this, I was eight years old again, sorting through my tater-tot casserole, removing the icky green beans, ground beef and mushrooms, leaving me with a pile of tater-tots.
The other mystery dish, thanks be to God, contained meat! But, but, but, I took a bite, chewed some flab and then cruch -- a bone, and this creature was not osteoporotic. I bit another piece, more flab and, again, crunch goes my chompers on a bovine bone.
And, chopsticks in hand, I picked out the green chiles and red chiles from this dish, transferred them to the "edible" pile, along with the green onions and red peppers from the other dish, and re-united the flabby, bony beef with its internal organs in my "discard" pile.
I was ashamed of myself. Here I thought I had crossed food's final frontiers in Sweden -- raw beef, raw steak, raw herring, raw crayfish -- and now I can't even qualify for junior membership in the Chinese Clean Plate Club.
The discard pile was just too rauncy, though, and I had to part with it. And how does one part with the discard pile?
In the middle of the cafeteria, close to the slopline, are two red buckets. In one red bucket, you put your used chopsticks, cups, anything not edible to anyone. In the other red bucket, your push the remains of your dinner. It is one big pile of slop, the kind of concoction schoolkids in America throw together at the end of meals to gross out everyone but themselves. Only in China, this sloppile greets you as you enter the slopline, empty silver prison tray in hand, and begin pointing and praying.
