Just had dinner with Lucy, Chace, Jamie, and a couple of his buddies at Duck King (鸭王). Many regions/cities in China have their own specialty cuisines and dishes that are famous within China, if not around the world. Lanzhou is Gansu province is famous for its long noodles; Chongqing in Sichuan province is known for its spicy hot-pot; Guizhou province is known for its famous “fuck-the-pot” chicken (see pic below); and Beijing has its famous roast duck.
The Chinese really take their translation seriously!
What happens with Beijing roast duck, at least at Duck King, is that you purchase an entire roast duck, which the servers bring out to your table and start cutting up. What they end up cutting off and serving to you is the portions of the duck that have the crispy skin on them, which in actuality isn’t very much. Then they cart the rest of the duck away, never to be seen again. So basically, you end up paying a lot of money to eat duck skin wrapped in a bun…which is pretty damn good, but not all that fulfilling.
Perhaps it was the slight nature of the duck, or the fact that it was five guys in one very small room, but the conversation invariably moved from the inane to the consequential. We talked about the duality of humanity (“that girl had a broke face, but a smokin’ body”), the onset of cynicism as we advance in age (“this soup tastes like shit”), and the benefit of truly understanding yourself (“I’m a pretty big pervert myself”).
And ultimately, we talked about the brutal honesty of life and all it has to offer.
“Chinese girls are so open and honest. A really cute girl called me and told me, ‘Sorry I can’t come to your party, I ate something bad and have been shitting runs all over the place since last night!’”
We all looked at each other and took pause to appreciate the courage with which the Chinese face life’s challenges and difficulties with nary an eye towards prevarication.
“Damn, that’s disgusting. That really is.” And it really was.
