Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [89]
The food, on the other hand, is huge in flavor. Cheryl orders radish-wrapped crab rolls for an appetizer, which the kitchen prepares by cutting a daikonlike white radish lengthwise into paper-thin strips and wrapping them around Alaskan crabmeat and black sesame seeds—an elegant idea with a tasty result, as is Bill’s salad of raw scallops sliced finely and topped with pomelo, a grapefruit relative, pulled into its tiny individual sacs, a delicate combination served with a robust house-made chile paste.
The main-course presentations practically knock us off our ebony chairs. The waiter delivers our crispy lamb ribs on a section of banana leaf over a long wooden plank. The cooks have boned out each rib individually and reassembled them side by side like a rack. Every bite mingles the crusty surface meat with melting fat and succulent rare lamb, enhanced beautifully with a sweet soy sauce. If that has us leaning back in our seats in appreciation, the fried baby soft-shell crabs kick the legs out from under us. They show up perched dramatically atop at least one hundred stir-fried dried red Szechuan chiles (the “looking toward heaven” variety) in a round, dark bamboo container an arm’s length in diameter. Neither of us can remember at first how to close our gaping mouths, but the reflex comes back with the initial taste of the luscious morsels coated in rice flour and ground red chile. On the side we get another stellar version of long beans, this time cut in two-inch pieces and stir-fried with garlic, ginger, bits of fresh red chile, minced pork, and dried shrimp.
“I can’t imagine we’ll have a finer or more artfully staged feast in China,” Cheryl says sensibly but ultimately in error.
Our flight to mainland China the next morning concerns us a little, for reasons of check-in rigmarole rather than safety. Everything goes quickly and professionally, though, on China Southern Airlines, leaving us plenty of time for breakfast in a fast-food court. Hoping for dim sum, we discover an irresistible anomaly and wind up with Louisiana red beans and rice, southern fried chicken, and biscuits at a Popeye’s, a chain based in New Orleans. Not bad at all for airport fare this far from the roots.
On the way to the gate for our nonstop hop to Shantou, the airport city closest to Chaozhou, we wander through the mall-like shopping arcade, heavy on international designer names with cookie-cutter purses and perfumes. There’s even a Ferrari exhibition with a doll-size replica of a red Testarossa, where Flat Stanley poses as the driver for a photo op. When we’re finally seated in the departure lounge, Cheryl looks around at the surrounding group of Chinese passengers. “No one else is wearing these goofy tags they gave us at the check-in desk,” a round stick-on label for our shirts with the airline logo and flight number. “I guess in their eyes we’re like unaccompanied minors, at risk of getting lost.”
“Probably so,” Bill says. “They don’t realize we’ve put Stanley at the wheel.”
Where else in the world would a city of three million people not qualify for an airport of its own? And, for that matter, remain unknown to most of humankind? In China, numerous other cities simply outrank Chaozhou in population, political clout, industrial strength, and international contacts and recognition. That’s basically why the local Communist Party wants us to go on TV.
Bill’s college friend, John Oliver; his wife, Patty; and a ramrod straight Chinese gentleman with a seriously squared-off flattop meet us at the Shantou airport, an efficient if plain facility. John introduces their companion as Ziggy, explaining that it’s their nickname for him based on the local Chinese dialect word for “driver,” a respected title in Chaozhou. “Ziggy won’t say much, but he knows English moderately well. He learned it during a long stint in the PLA”—Chinese People’s Liberation Army—“in circumstances he doesn’t discuss with us. The car is ours, but we don’t dare drive it ourselves, because if one of us got in an accident, all the blame would be put on us and the penalties