Cantonese Food Rocks!!

I had the chance to sit down with a guy from Halifax and a guy from 
Florida who are also taking the Mandarin course in Shenzhen.  It was 
interesting, and while i'm tempted to take a lot of what they had to say 
with a grain of salt, most of it did have the ring of truth to it.  i'll 
probably ignore some of the advice and find out things for myself, but a 
great deal of what they had to say actually made me a lot more 
comfortable with my decision to come here.  they covered a variety of 
subjects, and offered their advice and help on anything that i could 
possibly need.  i found, today, by following some of the advice that 
they gave me last night, that my day went a bit smoother than the days 
previous.

for example.  there's a little coffee shop out in front of the hotel 
that probably has the best pastries i've had in my entire life.  i love 
to sit on the patio, sip some tea, and relax, look around, and enjoy my 
breakfast.  i was in the habit of ordering at the counter, waiting for 
the food, then essentially fighting to get control of it so that i could 
sit down.  it was an uncomfortable situation all the way around.  thomas 
and zane said that it's best that you never try to serve yourself 
anywhere.  order, and go sit down, they'll bring your food to you, even 
if it's far easier for you to just do it. whatever you do, don't attempt 
to clean up after yourself, or return any dishes.  anytime you do any of 
these things, it's a direct suggestion that the employees aren't capable 
of performing their tasks to your standards, and they tend to get 
frustrated.  they simply cannot understand why you'd attempt to do these 
things on your own.  even if you're at burger king or mcdonalds, 
whatever you do, don't take your tray and dump things into the garbage, 
they pay someone to do that for you, and by doing that, you're doing 
someone else's job, which is a serious loss of face for that person.

there are a lot of crazy things that you'll see in china.  there's no 
idea of personal space or even of keeping some things in private, so you 
may see a lovers quarel in the middle of an intersection with traffic 
whizzing past on both sides of them (i'm pretty sure that red and green 
lights don't actually mean anything here), as long as nobody 
acknowledges what's happening, it's not happening.  the same thing if 
you see someone do something stupid....if you laugh, or acknowledge it 
in any way, you'll seriously shame that person and everyone around you.  
it's apparently best to keep it to yourself until you're talking to 
other americans/canadians/whatever and then you can share the crazy 
incident.

people here have a serious obsession with smart phones.  it's simply 
amazing.  they wander around with their head down, playing on their 
phones, ignoring any and all surroundings.  instead of dodging out of 
the way, or trying to rescue some completely distracted person who 
wanders into traffic, just let things happen on their own.  if he/she 
runs into you, he/she will probably fall flat on their back, pop back 
up, and be on their way again, without acknowledging anything.  whatever 
you do, don't apologize for running into them, as it's actually their 
fault anyway, and nobody really cares what you have to say anyway.  
besides, you risk losing face yourself, and it's best to just assume 
that you're in the right, and get on with things.  zane and thomas said 
that they're amazed everytime they see a guy playing on his smartphone 
wander right into an intersection...they say that somehow he always 
makes it across, never having seen anyone swerve out of his way.  i was 
paying more attention today, and noticed that they were exactly right.  
i saw a lot of people wander across the street, completely ignoring the 
vast amount of traffic heading straight for them, it was a little 
disconcerting.

I went to a cantonese restaurant today.  Absolutely everything was in 
Mandarin, no translation, so i just pointed at 3 random things. the 
waitress said, no, you can't do that, and guided me to point at 3 
different things.  she then gave me the tea menu, and i pointed at 
something, she eventually just smiled and went to get "very famous 
chinese tea".  So, i had dim sum pastries filled with taro cream, the 
best pineapple pork i've had in my entire life, and oolong tea. she 
actually stood about 3 feet from the table, and got upset when i tried 
to refill my own cup.  the food was beyond fantastic, and i look forward 
to taking people there when they come to visit.  they also delivered 
what looked to be their entire silverware drawer, and essentially 
laughed at my attempts to use chopsticks to eat pastries...i don't blame 
them, if i hadn't been frustrated doing that, i would have done the same 
thing, it was a little ridiculous, but...i still have no idea how they 
eat the little dim sum pastries, do they use chopsticks or their hands?  
i think next time i'll just use my hands, it would be easier, and if i 
see someone look disturbed, i'll know i was doing it wrong.

i had dim sum for dinner today too, again, cantonese food is absolutely 
fantastic, and only the spices that they serve with it will burn the 
taste buds off of your tongue.  if you don't know what dim sum is, i'd 
recommend using wikipedia, as my understanding is not correct, and i'm 
not altogether sure either.  i'm okay with that, and will probably 
figure it out eventually.  chinese google has a few issues, and finding 
wiki is one of them, i wonder if it's blocked.  i can say that youtube, 
facebook, bloomberg, and a variety of other random websites are blocked 
here.  they removed the addresses from their DNS servers, so, you can't 
search for them or put in the numeric address or anything.  they do randomly work on my phone, but it's not something you can rely on.