A very Chinese dinner. Part 1.

I didn't leave Shanghai as I was supposed to yesterday. Instead what I did was stay another night and be introduced to the art and etiquette of dinners in China. The result was a painful process of education and being too scared to eat most of the night.

It's been a long time since I have hankered after blond hair and blue eyes. I remember I used to have that dream, perhaps the result of my being brought-up in England where Caroline had golden curls and beautiful blue eyes and everyone on Blue Peter and my church had them too. Odd that. But last night the dream appeared in my head again, whilst I was sitting there pretending to be eating and trying not to think what the 'elders' thought of this odd and ill-mannered Chinese girl. I am strange I know, but I didn't mean to be ill-mannered. I just had no idea what to do. Does anyone know of any books about etiquette at a Chinese dinner table?

It's been a long time since I told people I'm not Chinese. I remember being ashamed of being Chinese and wanting others to think that I was at least mixed, and just you know, not Chinese. I'm not mixed. I'm Chinese, and I'm proud of it now. It's taken time though. Still, I complain about the Chinese and cannot for the life of me understand why they spit and litter and push and shove and disregard traffic rules and disregard queues and believe that whoever speaks the loudest is boss... Honestly. Chinese people are so weird. But I digress. It's been a long time since I told people I'm not Chinese. Whenever people ask me where I'm from, I say instantly Hong Kong, or that I am Chinese. Note the difference between saying I am Chinese and I am from China. I am from Hong Kong. Not China. One country, two systems and most Hong Kong people hate being associated with China. Another weird Chinese thing. Actually no, it's not weird. Hong Kong people think they are better than the Chinese, and while I'm not sure of the word 'better' definitely more 'accepted' because they know the norms and practices of the West (formerly England and now most people hanker after America, the land of the free... ugh). Less with the spitting and littering and pushing and shoving and at least cars actually stop at red lights so I can frigging cross the road without being worried I'll get run over by a car turning left (or right? Shiznuts I can't tell right from left...) and actually queue up to deposit money in banks. I'm 26 years old and I almost burst into tears at the bank because I couldn't get money deposited because I could never get to the window where the teller sat.

I suppose it's my own fault for falling in love with a wushu master and former national champion of China in martial arts. A natural athlete who, I was told last night, was a favourite of all the coaches and teachers and leaders in the Shanghai team and later the national team. So it was with much anxiety that I showed up with him last night at his former coach's son's birthday dinner. Note the weirdness of it - a kid's birthday and the dinner is for adults. The Chinese way of doing things.

There were two coaches present who were especially close to the boyfriend, Coach Liu and Coach Yang. Coach Liu is the father of the birthday kid, and it turns out that I'd met him at least twice before at parties where he was really rather drunk. He's funny, and to me, he's more like a friend than an elder. The first time I met him was at Cashbox, a karaoke place. It was back in May or June last year, when I was still trying my darndest to get to know Louis (let alone go out with him) and he was there with some other friends but then joined our party because most of the wushu team was there. He sang Cantonese songs, and I honestly didn't know he was singing in Cantonese until he got to this one line in the chorus that he sang more accurately than the rest of the song put together... I almost died of laughter because I'd thought he was singing in some weird mountain dialect as they are called. Uh.. no. The second time I saw him (or at least the second time in my memory) was at Louis's birthday party back in January. The boys then had been so drunk that I'd had a good time of telling them what happened (completely the opposite of what they thought - they took me home. Uh no, I took them to the bar and then I went home by myself) Coach Liu spoke to me in Cantonese for a whole night. Well, for about an hour. He actually speaks pretty good Cantonese when he's drunk. Well. Better than when he's not drunk...!!! But anyway, hence my feeling that he's more a friend than an elder. Because I can talk to him and laugh at him and have a good time.

The other guy - Coach Yang - was an elder. An elder to the point where I really think he's the closest thing to a father that the boyfriend could have (it's been a year and I still haven't had the guts to ask what happened to his dad). Argh. I couldn't have been more ill-prepared for a dinner with this man. Honestly I was so unable to grasp what I had to do and what was proper to do at the dinner table... I kept wishing there was a hole underneath my chair so that I might actually just fall through it. I tried hiding behind the tall bowl of soup that was on the lazy susan. And then it occurred to me that if I were a yangniu - a foreign girl - I wouldn't be so frigging worried because it wouldn't be expected of me to know the rules and the etiquette.

Oh flip. Plane's landing. God bless :)