Tales from china, the 25 pence affair
So its been a long long time. Well, the plan has reconfigured and mutated and bought me to Yangshuo in China. Its another land of towering rock karsks (a la halong bay, but on land). I'm looking for work in Hong Kong at the moment (via the net mostly) and living here to save money. Spent a couple of weeks in the city before making a break for the mainland, I'm just over the border from HK really. Well, i say just over the border, its a 12 hour bus ride, but this is china remember. Of my adventures in last month (or more) being attacked by meat clever wielding locals definately highlight. Liz (my yankee girlfriend) and I went out to get dinner the other week; in yangshou they set up resturaunt stands every evening near the town centre, each run by a local family. I guess there must be 15 or so stands, each with collection of trestle chairs and tables and a food table stacked with local produce which you basically point at, and ask them to cook. These tables are an adventure in themselves, stacked up with ducks, chickens, pork, beef, bamboo, greens of a million varieties, egg plant mushrooms, snails, big tubs of live fish, (which they'll batter to death on your command) and everyones personal favorite mountain rat. Yes, its a massive 18 inch rat skinned for cooking and with huge teeth - yum! Apparenty their teeth are famously strong and the chinese keep live mountain rats in cages and get them to bite metal in order to test its strength and thickness. Anyway, I digress;So Liz and I think we are pretty china savvy, so start the process of negotiating prices for each dish we want, which we agree, with the chubby restraunter, 15 quai (thats one pound) for a plate of scrambled egg and fried tomato (a chinese fave) and fried potato and egg plant. We sit down and the kid (who Liz claims looked cute, but later turns out to be the embodiment of lucifer) gives us a bowl of rice, which he says we need to pay 4 quai for (25p). Now rice is free for chinese people and foriegners normally get charged 2 quai, combined with the fact they presented us with the smallest plate of egg and tomatoe ever we get up and leave refusing to pay - basically they were trying to rip us off, and we weren't having it. Unfortunately the owners resented our display of principle and decend on us. The husband and number one son grabbing huge metal cleavers, that they had just been using to dismember fish and cut chicken throats, and started waving them with alarming proximity to my head whilst bawling at us in mandarin. Son number 2 (having been told by L in chinese not to touch her) crabbed me also, as did the wife, so in total I initiated my escape with a small chinese family of four clinging on to me, two of which were ready to carry out a quick gutting. Liz thinking that they wouldn't chop her up kept diving between me and the cleaver men, and I, naturally doing my best to prevent her getting sliced and diced kept shoving her back, creating a rather ridiculous dance where we circled each other constantly ringing chinese. By now the other stall owners, people eating, passers by etc had gathering to watch the charade, probably at least fifty people hemmed us in (this is pretty normal when the chinese get into arguement in public - these passers form of quasi peoples court). I stood helpless and Liz was screeming at the chinese cook who screamed back at her, it was in chinese but i'll do by best to translate:L: YOU CHEATED US, YOU ARE A CHEATING PERSONC: I DIDN'T CHEAT YOUL: YOU ARE A CHEATING PERSONC: I DIDN'T CHEAT YOUL: YOU ARE A CHEATING PERSONC: I DIDN'T CHEAT YOUyes, real school yard stuff, not helped by our rather limited command of the language. A chinese student of english then turned up to try and disolve the situation and we explained to her what was going on, and she exlained this to the impromptu peoples court, who couldn't understand why she was defending us. That is until we mentioned that they tried to charge us four quai for rice, from the reaction of the crowd who flinched at this laughable price we sensed the tide of arguement was turning, so Liz changed her arguement (again i'll translate)L: YOU CHARGED US 4 QUAIC: NO I DIDNTL: YOU CHARGED US 4 QUAIC: NO I DIDNTL: YOU CHARGED US 4 QUAIC: NO I DIDNTAgain, persuasive stuff from the foreigners, and the chinese cook lady started laughing nervuously, which in chinese culture means 'i'm losing face and don't no what to do' but continued to demand payment for food we refused to accept. As quickly as it started we were told that we 'could now go' as a local had paid and the crowd dispersed in seconds. Apparently they didn't want China to loose face so gave her the money. Obviously I wasn't happy she'd gotten away with it - she really was a CHEATING PERSON. Good news is, I've still in full possession of my limbs.
posted by justplainnigel @ 2:17 PM
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