For you newbies, here is the drill. You ask your woman, "What is it?" They will say, "I do not know in English." That is warning number 1. Then they will say, "But it is good for you." Warning number 2.
Now if you have made it past the first two warnings and you are still curious and asking but not getting and answer, look around you at your table, it no one else is eating it and they are all looking at you? Remember you have been warned twice already. They are all waiting to see your reaction to eating something they will not eat and if you knew what it was you wouldn't either. You have just achieved warning number 3.
Then suddenly something will rise up in you and it says, "I'll be a man here and show my woman I can do it, I fear nothing." I only have three simple words for you. They are resist the urge. You will find that once you have ate what ever it is that it does not taste like chicken, it does not have the texture of chicken, and if it were alive it would not even sound like a chicken. You have passed warning number 4 and the woman two tables over has passed out because she really thinks you are going to eat it.
Once you have ate it you will be disappointed with the taste and texture. As everyone ELSE at the table is laughing you will find that suddenly one person has found in the deep dark recesses of their memory the English name of what you just ate.
If you passed all of the warning and you ate it anyway don't worry, you were not the first person to do this and you will not be the last person either. Looking at the philosophically, you will have a great story for years to come.
Mind came just two months ago. I was in Guangzhou, our Ambassador had bailed on me... He used some flimsy excuse like wanting to go be with his wife in Beijing so here I was in a restaurant with two beautiful women. One on either side. Yes one of them was Peggy and the other was a very good friend of hers.
Ted I am sure you know the restaurant... it is surrounded by water and some of the tables are boats in the water. There are also statues of fish made of color sepia I think with lights inside them. Quite beautiful. I wanted to eat in a boat but the women didn't because it was to hot outside.
So the other woman, Wendy, was ordering the food and asked me if I would like to try this food. I forgot the warnings and said sure. Honestly it looked like a game hen. Well it wasn't. It was a pigeon. I was doing OK, it didn't taste bad, it was kind of good but I was struggling with what it was. Then Peggy points at a part of the bird and says to me, don't eat that part. I ask why? She said I do not know the American word. Then I made the worst mistake I could possibly make. I handed her the pocket translator. She typed in the word and it was rectum. That wasn't so bad but as I looked at it, it was a little round circle with little burnt hairs all around it. Then I remembered plucking little burnt hairs on another part. Well that was it. I was finished for the night.
Peggy was quite amused but she didn't eat a bite of it. Wendy however polished the rest of it off. Including the head. yech.
Two months have passed and now I can laugh about it. My story isn't bad and I know there are worse out there.
