我的午饭不是鸡胸肉

In an ideal world, after living in a place for a year and a half I wouldn't experience culture shock anymore.

But then again in an ideal world Jim Halpert would have asked me to marry him a long time ago, and I'd sing like Norah Jones.  Unfortunately none of those things are true, and the culture seems to be shocking me more than usual this week as Christmas approaches.  There's an abundance of other emotions which could be contributing to my lack of patience, but regardless I'm finding it more difficult to retain my usual degree of joyfulness.

Today I went to the knock-off KFC across the street from our favorite grocery store, hoping to find some peace of mind in a big hunk of chicken.  I've been there once before, in fact it's the very restaurant which provided our succulent Thanksgiving chicken.  I located the characters which supposedly represent "chicken breast" on the menu, and ordered one while bragging inwardly about being able to read two words in Chinese.  I was beaming with pride as I sat at the table and waited for my coming victory bird.  As the employee advanced toward me armed with a flat piece of meat that was about ½ a centimeter thick and broader than my head, my pride morphed into astonishment and a few other indescribable feelings.  I'm still quite bamboozled about what I actually ended up eating.  It had the look and texture of chicken, but smelled like fish and had a strange fishy chicken flavour.  At first I thought such an event would worsen my culture shock and reduce me to tears but in fact it had the opposite effect.  I was so flabbergasted with by my mystery meat that I just kept repeating, only in China in between giggles.  When I go back to the U.S. I'll get exactly what I order most of the time.  What's there to laugh about then?

 

"Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive."