A Story of Hot Pot
“So where are eating?” sighed Caroline.
“We can go to the expensive stuff on the Bund—M on the Bund, that French place or this other place—Hi Di Low,” Nadia said, acting as the organizer of the group.
“Hai Di Lao,” mumbled Marcus. He couldn’t really understand Chinese, but at least he could get the basic pronunciation.
“Ugggh, I’m so tired,” continued Marcus. “Let’s just meet up at 7 and decide then.” No matter how much information was available to the group of 5—Trip Advisor, Google ratings, concierge suggestions—choosing where to go for dinner continued to be one of the hardest decisions of the trip.
“Sounds good, whatever,” Andy said. “The hot-pot place, Hoi day lu sounds like it will be a good option. The concierge desk said they don’t speak a lot of English. Err… they don’t speak any English… but they have pictures on the menu, so at least we can fake our way through it. Hopefully my Cantonese will get us by.”
“Yeah man, I’ll help where I can, but all I can say are numbers and random phrases like ‘I like to dance’ or ‘see a movie.’” Marcus and Andy head back to their room to take a nap that jet lag has pretty much made mandatory since they arrived in Shanghai a day ago.
Marcus wakes up, rephrasing his earlier words. “Nnnnngghhh, I feel awful. Why are naps so painful? This dinner better be good.”
“Don’t worry man, I have faith that we won’t die tonight.” Andy’s vote of confidence for the group’s ability to get through a Chinese-only speaking restaurant is high, apparently. “Let’s go get the girls and meet up with Momodou.”
The group meets in the lobby of the hotel, and makes the final call.
“Hy do Lou it is,” proclaims Andy.
“Hai di Lao,” says Marcus, quietly. “Let’s do it,” he continues.
“Yeah guys, I’m so excited!” says Caroline. “This is going to be an adventure! I can’t wait to see how this goes.” Caroline continues to be the optimist in the group. Andy, meanwhile, is still slowly recovering from his nap. Waking up from it felt roughly like climbing out of quicksand after being clubbed on the head.
“Alright, let’s get a cab. Marcus—you got your drunk card and phrase book?”
Marcus confirms by holding up the card with the hotel’s name and address written on it in Chinese and the all-important “I don’t eat pork,” also in Chinese characters for Nadia’s benefit.
“The other people will be so jealous of us,” Nadia chimes in. “We’re going to have an authentic experience and not pay $40 for some crappy Western food.”
Between the five people going to the restaurant, Andy is the most capable with Chinese, having grown up in a Cantonese/American household, but unfortunately like many Americans losing some of the facility he had with the language as time passed. Between the remaining four—Marcus, Momodou, Caroline, and Nadia there is probably about the same amount of Chinese words known—four. Marcus took a few introductory Chinese courses a few years ago, but the amount of language ability that remains is minimal.
The group of 5 climb into the taxi after getting a printout of the restaurant name in Chinese characters from the concierge desk.
“I want bubble tea,” Carline continues. “Bubble tea and hot pot and dumplings and pork buns. We are going to do so much on this trip...”
“Caroline, calm down.” Nadia says. “We still have a week and a half left. I don’t think the hot pot place offers all those things! Did you see how much Twilight talked to Ashley today? I can’t believe he sat next to you and didn’t even talk to you! How does he do that? White sweater was still wearing white. She’s so rude. I walked by her again, and she didn’t even say hi. Who do the globals think they are? Why don’t they have bubble tea at the hot pot place, Andy? Andy!?”
Nadia continues her characteristic rapid-fire question and self-answer conversation style, throwing in the nicknames she, Caroline, and Andy had developed for the other people on the China visiting program over the course of the last few weeks. Twilight is a guy who looks like a character from twilight. White sweater is a girl who always seems to wear white. The nicknames are very sophisticated. Globals are the other group of MBA students who have made the trip to Shanghai over the winter break.
“Can you guys chill?” Marcus interrupts. “I think the cab driver just turned up his music because of your voice Nadia.” Marcus chuckles until he sees the stare from Nadia and turns his attention to the streets outside. The Shanghai residents on the streets continue with their normal activities on a frigid and rainy Friday night. Heels click quickly on the pavement for those making the dash from their car to a bar or club while other city residents smoke and chat outside, rubbing their hands together in the chill. Although the area is not as pristine as the Bund area where the group is staying at the Westin, the streets are clean and orderly. Shanghai could easily be the Chinatown section of LA or New York in Andy’s eyes.
“I’ve been to hot-pot places a bunch of times before,” Andy begins. “Basically you choose a broth and then different things to put in the boiling soup—seafood, chicken, other vegetables, noodles.”
“I can’t wait. Oohh—I there it is.” Caroline points out the window and the five of them climb out of the cab.
They enter the restaurant, and the confusion begins. Andy is talking to the host, while Marcus, Caroline, and Nadia stare at the chaos going on around them. Parents with kids are walking quickly to or from the bathroom; groups from 2 to 8 are seated throughout the restaurant, with shining eyes and laughing smiles, with a bubbling section in the center of each table. The host begins to lead Andy and the rest of the group into the restaurant, pointing them toward a small corner table with barely enough room for four kids-sized chairs.
“No, we want hot pot,” Andy explains, Making a symbol of a pot with boiling water with his hands. Really, there is no hand gesture of a pot with boiling water, so it turns into more of a swimming gesture with one hand flicking the air.
The host stares at the group and continues to speak Mandarin.
Hanging in the back, Marcus makes out a few words but can’t do anything to help. Nadia tries to help Andy by making her own boiling broth gesture and pointing.
“Hot pot! We want that,” she points to a group close by, who at this point, along with most everyone else in the restaurant have directed their attention to the Westerners who clearly have no idea what they’re doing. Finally, a manager who speaks English comes over.
“We have full—you wait here 10 minutes. Chinese Checkers, water. Then we call you to hot pot.” Somehow the message that they have to wait at this kids-size table with a few games and water that the tour books told people to avoid makes its way across. Andy sits down dejectedly, frustrated that his Cantonese is not enough to understand exactly what the servers are saying.
“It’s alright Andy. We wouldn’t even have gotten this far without you.” Caroline adds some words of comfort to Andy as Marcus sets up the Chinese Checkers board in completely the wrong way.
“Here’s how you play—you put all of your marbles in a triangle, and then just move one at a time into any other triangle until the other triangle is full.”
“Whatever. Let’s play.” Caroline, Momodou, and Marcus play a broken game of Checkers while Nadia consoles Andy and makes sure that the wait staff won’t ignore them.
After 15 minutes, the group gets seated and puts in their order for vegetable broth, seafood, sweet potatoes, and noodles, being careful to avoid pork for Nadia’s sake.
The water begins to boil, and the Westerner table now looks just as chaotic as the surrounding ones.
“This is great!” “What’s this one?” “Are the shrimp here yet?” “Make sure the spoon doesn’t fall in!” “Can we put the duck in yet?!” “Are you sure this is broccoli? It doesn’t look like broccoli.” “Who ordered so many shrimp?”
It isn’t really clear who ordered what, or if the translations for the things to put into the hot pot are accurate.
What the English-speaking waiter put on the table as “sweet potatoes,” was clear and noodle-looking. The broccoli was clearly cauliflower.
“Guys- this is awesome!” Caroline exclaims.
“For sure,” agrees Marcus. “Definitely not sweet potatoes, but still awesome.”
At this point, a server comes over, reaches into a bowl, and takes a pile of rice flour and egg into a stretchy ball. He continues to swing the ball around like a pizza, until something resembling strands of taffy forms. The server twirls, spins, twists, and swings the ingredients until they magically turn into the noodles that will go into the soup.
“Awesome! That’s crazy,” says Nadia. “How does he do that? I hope they don’t drop it on the ground. Caroline! Take a picture! Why aren’t you taking a picture? Andy- why don’t you tell him not to drop it on the ground?”
What started out as a groggy decision just to eat because it is dinner time turned out to be a memorable night.
“Andy, this is awesome. Thank you so much.” Caroline continues to be the gracious cheerleader.
“Guys, I didn’t do anything. But at least we’re not dead yet. The globals will definitely be jealous.” Andy finally cracks a smile as the amount of food that the group ordered becomes much bigger than the size of their stomachs. Although the food keeps coming, Andy sends the last few things back.
“Nice job, Andy,” agrees Marcus. “I can’t believe this actually worked. We’re going to have stories for days.”
The group slides out of the booth, removing the seat covers, bibs and phone covers that are part of the frenzy of the hot pot dining experience. They split up into separate cabs, and Nadia hands the driver her drunk card with the address of the hotel.
“Wo bu zhi dao. Wo men zai nar?” The cab driver has no idea where the three in the cab want to go. Marcus takes the card back and pieces together the handwriting on the bottom.
“I don’t eat pork.”
The cab pulls from the curb and begins toward an unknown destination. Definitely a memorable night in Shanghai.
