China Day 5: How To Eat Live Animals

Tonight, we found ourselves on the restaurant row on Nanhuan Lu in Guilin, trying to locate a restaurant recommended by Frommer's. On the way there, we overheard a piercing squawk, and turned to see a local restauranteer beheading a chicken on the street, allowing the blood to run down the sidewalk. Wallace took a picture, and then wished he hadn't.

We couldn't locate the restaurant by name, so we entered a place that was our best guess.

"At least this place doesn't have any cages outside," I said.

"Yeah it does," said Wallace. "It even has those small furry things."

"Small furry things," I said. "Mmmm."

The small furry things slept in their cages, unperturbed. We sat down and ordered the local specialty - beer fish; the fish isn't fried in beer batter, but merely cooked with beer. After the waitress left the table, Wallace got up and announced that it was time to pick our fish.

We went outside with the waitress, who gestured at a particular fish. She pulled it out of a tank with a net and plopped it down onto the sidewalk for our inspection.

"How about NOT putting our food on the ground?" I asked, but she was oblivious to my concerns. She and Wallace entered into a involved discussion (in Mandarin) regarding the fish.

"The fish was swimming upside down," said Wallace to me as an aside. "I'm not down with that."

"I'm not down with putting our meal on the concrete," I said.

The waitress tried to upsell Wallace on a monster fish, but Wallace refused. Too much food. He pointed at a catfish, but apparently you can't make beer fish with a catfish, so we were at an impasse.

Then some guy, who may or may not have been affiliated with the eatery, walked up to the restaurant with two fish in a net, and dumped them in the tank. One of them successfully manages to swim upright. Wallace and I gave the waitress the thumbs up. She pulled it out of the the tank.

"Make sure she doesn't let it touch the ground..." I said.

As if she had heard me, the waitress kept the fish well above the sidewalk. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, without warning, the waitress raised the fish above her head, and VIOLENTLY SMACKED IT AGAINST THE GROUND. The fish was completely motionless.

WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE.

Wallace told me that the waitress needed to stun the fish so they could weigh it. The fisherman came over with a scale - a simple rod with a weight hanging from it; he picked up the fish and announced the weight.

We went back inside the restaurant, they cooked the fish, we ate it.

And it was very, very good.

Other highlights of the day: Jon and I visited a dim sum cafeteria with a simple ordering system. Point at the dish you want, and then make a gesture indicating how many you want.

Several walks along the pretty path that runs along the length of the lakes in Guilin, both during the day and night. The Chinese care so much about landscaping that it's almost obsessive. Hey China, how about taking some of that love for landscape, and transferring it to say, architecture?

Walking near the rear entrance of a restaurant, and watching the manager lead thirty employees in calisthenics. Calisthenics in this case being dancing really badly to awful Chinese techno music.

Buying shorts and sneakers (it's too hot for jeans) at a Chinese department store, and generally embarrassing the employees with my complete failure to understand how a transaction is completed in China. By the way, I bought two pairs of shorts and a pair of sneakers for less than $30. And no, I will not wear them in the states.