Country Driving [192]
Near the entrance of the restaurant, at a big round table, eight men were finishing their meal. They must have arrived early in the evening, and it was clear that they had been drinking hard. One of them hectored the waitress, complaining loudly about the food, and the restaurant owner hurried over. He was a young man in his thirties; his wife helped him run the place. He tried to appease the customer, offering apologies, but the other men chimed in loudly. At last the boss gave them a discount, along with a free round of beers, but the men’s voices continued to rise.
In China it’s common for people in restaurants to complain about food. The Chinese can be passive about many things, but food is not one of them; I suppose this is one reason they’ve ended up with a first-rate cuisine and a long history of political disasters. Nevertheless there was something unusual about the scene at the hotpot restaurant. Offering a discount and free drinks is an extreme measure, and generally it reduces a party to quiet grumbling. But this group continued to shout and carry on. They called the owner back for another tongue-lashing, and they yelled at his wife, and then they insisted on speaking with the chef. The poor man stood there, wide-eyed in a dirty white smock, while one of the drunks shook a finger in his face. He complained about the oil and the cuts of meat; he said the vegetables weren’t fresh. The restaurant was quite small and the other diners watched this scene intently. After the party finally left, the place was quiet for a minute and then the drunkest man burst back through the door, like a villain in a horror film. He shouted one last string of complaints before his buddies pulled him out for good.
After it was finished, the owner came to our table. “I’m sorry about the disturbance,” he said. “But you have to understand they weren’t really angry about the food!” He explained: it had all been planned by the boss of the other hotpot restaurant down the street. The competing boss had paid the men to have an early meal, get drunk, and make a scene. The goal was to ruin the grand opening, and the owner hadn’t recognized the stunt until it was too late.
He was earnest and soft-spoken, and he went from table to table, explaining the situation. But it was hopeless: Chinese complaints are highly contagious, sweeping through crowds like a bad germ. It has something to do with the group impulse, and people can’t seem to help themselves—if they see others behaving a certain way, they immediately catch the vibe. And here in the hotpot restaurant it happened at our own table. Master Luo commented that the place wasn’t very clean, and his friend remarked that the vegetables didn’t look so great. The broth was too salty; there wasn’t enough meat. It was low quality, too—they made this complaint while steadily dunking food into the oil and eating it with relish. That’s one thing about Chinese food criticism: it never interferes with the appetite. By the end of the meal, Cheng Youqin was even denigrating the tea. The baby was the only one with nothing bad to say—he remained calm as ever, inhaling secondhand smoke and sweating like a little pig in the hotpot fumes.
After the unsatisfactory food had been completely devoured, Master Luo’s friend dipped his chopsticks in beer and shoved them into the baby’s mouth. The little guy wrinkled his face—the most expressive he’d been all evening. This encouraged the friend to embark on a series of reflex