A funny experience in a Chinese restaurant:
I visited China in the Fall of 1999 while doing background research for Safely Home. We were in this gigantic restaurant in some city 100 miles from Beijing, don’t remember the name. (Only 7 million people so I’d never heard of it.) They were bringing out plate after plate of fabulous food. Then our Chinese host who was getting us from place to place called out the chef and stood talking with him in the corner, and pointing at the plates. He seemed very concerned. He came back and sat next to me and I asked him what he was talking to the chef about. He sheepishly told me, “I wanted to make sure we were not serving our American guests dog. I know how you feel about that.” I assured him he was right about our feelings, and he assured me that the chef said we had not been eating dog. (The food was delicious, even what I couldn’t identify, and I don’t know and don’t want to know everything I ate. And the seating capacity of this restaurant? The manager told us he had tables for 800 people.)
