A Moveable Feast

Not long ago I had the privilege of attending a banquet. It took place outside of Shanghai, in a largish town where the Lunatic had some business to complete. We attended the banquet as guests of the local factory owner. A gentlemen who for our purposes will be known as Mr. Fu.

The banquet takes place in the private dining room of the local hotel. Picture a large room, decorated to look like one of the Palace of Versaille’s lesser suites, complete with brocade wallpaper and gilt-edged mirrors. In the centre of the room a large round table holds court, on top of which rests the largest lazy susan I have ever seen, made out of opaque glass. Around the table a dozen people are seated. I am the only one who does not speak Mandarin. Because I am the only obviously foreign looking person there the waiter brings a knife and fork. This is not good. Not only because my chopstick skills are passable but because if you have ever seen anyone trying to eat a delicate Chinese dish out of a tiny porcelain bowl you will understand just how ridiculous it can look to try and do it with a knife and fork. I decline, in what I hope is a polite fashion.

Not that all the dishes will be delicate. In fact, at events like this one there is really no telling what will land on the table. As the waiters begin to bring out steaming platters and bowls I get the familiar feeling that I am a contestant on a B-rate American game show. You know the kind where a man with an orange suntan exhorts hapless players to spin the wheel of fortune and the audience collectively intones the theme song of “round and round she goes, where she’ll stop nobody knows …” As the lazy susan begins to spin I silently pray for the cubes of braised Kobe beef or stir-fried green leafy things, knowing simultaneously that it could just as likely be the transparent sliced abalone or wild boar tripe soup that lands in front of me. Because, see, there is nothing to be done once the wheel of food fortune has spun. To refuse a dish is just bad manners. And while I am up for trying new things (chicken ass kebab is surprisingly tasty), previous forays into banquet food have convinced me that I do not like sea cucumber, phoenix claw (whole chicken feet), fish eyes or stewed pork intestine.

I am looking into my bowl, concentrating on not dropping a dumpling when I hear a collective intake of breath, followed by murmurs of pleasure. I look up to see a waiter entering the room behind a large platter piled with what looks like raw fish. Beside the fish is something resembling fish skin, strangely rubbery looking and coloured a mottled yellow and black. And then, plucked from some obscure national geographic reference in my memory, it makes sense. Its fugu! Otherwise known as puffer fish. Yes, the same kind of puffer fish that is highly toxic if not prepared by a highly trained chef. Yes, the same puffer fish that is responsible for the death of a couple of Japanese diners each year. Yes, the same dish that our host is honouring us by serving in all its exotic glory.

I can only smile as the waiter serves each and every one of us some of the soup in which the pieces of fugu have now been steeped. We all get a piece of the rubbery looking skin too. Unbidden, more national geographic snippets come back to me, words like “neurotoxin” and “slow but conscious death through paralysis”. I employ delaying tactics while slowly stirring my soup and watching my fellow diners for signs of imminent poisoning. I am just beginning to think I might have escaped eating the stuff when I catch Mr. Fu’s eye. He is staring at me, his spoon half raised to his mouth. I wait. So does he. And then I do what I know I must, slowly, with what I hope is a look of rapturous anticipation, I raise my spoon to my lips and sip.

And you know what? It doesn’t taste bad at all.