I went to a Chinese restaurant, Golden Ocean, this evening with a few co-workers. It’s the restaurant claimed to be the best-known in Queanbeyan, and I used to know the chief who was the husband of a Chinese lady who lived in a nursing home back to 5 years ago. I don’t know if she is still alive or her husband is still working there.
I remember that she used to suggest me, if I would ever go there one day, just talk to her husband and tell him that I am a friend of her, so I can get some special discount or bigger serve in one dish or something. I didn’t go for the time being when I was up there, and I was pretty sure I would never do it, even if one day I really had gone. It’s just not my type of thing. It would be awkward and it’s unnatural.
Now I am sitting here, talking to a small lady with arching back. The room seems quite dark and the music is typical of what you hear from most of Chinese restaurants that appear in a lot of American movies. It’s maybe traditional, but I can assure you that none of Chinese restaurant in China is actually like that.
Chinese people don’t like to eat in the darkness or under dim light, and they don’t choose to eat in a quiet or small restaurant as it’s often being considered not good enough if there are not many customers. Also, you won’t see one waiter or waitress serving 8-10 tables. On the contrary, you see 3 waiters/waitresses serving one table. You might hear music, but you most likely would be overwhelmed by the noise from other people instead of music itself.
You don’t have soup on the table first, and you don’t start with spring rolls or sesame toast as entrée. Nobody in China would eat spring rolls in restaurants or eat them as entrée. They order cold dishes as the start. The common rule is cold and easy dishes coming first, then big, more complex and hot dishes coming last. One more thing is, waiter or waitress don’t ask you if you would like to have some dessert after you finish the main course, and you don’t get fortune cookies at the end. Instead, you have fruit.
Restaurants in China have industrialized and it has gone far beyond family business. I know I should have complained after having been in here for more than 7 years and knowing how Chinese restaurants here had been adapted to suit western people’s taste and eating habit, but sometimes I just can’t help wondering how much has it contributed on building up the wrong expectation and perception toward Chinese food culture.
What they get is simply not what actually happens. Mind you I haven’t really mentioned about the food yet. Chinese people don’t use sauce for every single stir-fry. In another word, not all the dishes are link to a kind of sauce. 99% Chinese dishes are supposed to be done with raw ingredients instead of a particular liquid-ish sauce. It’s extremely ridiculous to expect to make a nice flavoured Chinese dish by just adding several spoons of ready-to-go sauce into a wok. Chinese don’t stir fry every meat dish with onion, capsicum and sliced carrot; they don’t make fried rice a main course, they only do that when there is left-over rice; Chinese food has many styles – Chinese food is not equal to Cantonese food that is provided here dominantly…….
The list is just getting lengthy here. I’d better stop now. As I realised that the more I talk about it, the more I crave for authentic Chinese food. Guess what? I suddenly had a flash of the image of that little restaurant at the back of the post office in Yue Ji Yuan. Their fried rice is 100 times better than the one I had tonight. I loved their pork liver, spinach and vermicelli soup (odd combination, isn’t it) and simply Shui Zhu Rou Pian (water boiled Sichuan Pork Hot Pot)……..
Oh, mouth watering moment 
Can we have them tonight?
The grape Hyacinths are growing quickly in the past months. From seeing the first growth sign up to now, I reckon this kind of grass-like plants have reached their full length (10-15cm, according to the pack instruction).
