Hospitality

There is much I could write about today but I feel I should share a little bit about the dining experience over here. We haven't had a light lunch since arriving in Jinan and although I suspect that we are not experiencing every day life each dining experience has been extraordinary. First of all, in each restaurant we have been given a private room. In fact most of the restaurants we have visited have only consisted of private dining rooms. The first (wedding proposal) night was conducted in a building which would have been considered large if it had manufactured airplanes. We filed past military style rows of greeters through a maze of corridors until we reached our room – a luxurious dining room with two large circular tables. The ordering was formal with us on the ‘top table’ with the senior members of the family. In spite the size of the restaurant the personal room (with its own toilet) was staffed by enthusiastic but also invisible staff who kept the circular serving wheel in the centre stocked and made sure that whenever we looked down our drink was always full.

I thought that this must be the pinnacle of dining in China but this has proved to be the norm. Every lunch and dinner we have been driven to another opulent dining experience with a dizzying array of new dishes to try. Even when we've turned up to restaurants without a booking (as we did at the Confucius temple yesterday) the service has been universally good and the food perfectly presented. Today surpassed our, now highly raised, expectations. We travelled to a mountain just outside Jinan called Tai. The views and experience of this place will have to be saved for another blog post but when we had finished we descended the mountain got into our cars and headed to a restaurant in a tea growing area of China. On this occasion, rather than a room we were given a small temple in which to dine. The restaurant consisted of a small village of traditional style Chinese buildings around courtyards with gardens and fish ponds. Along with a new array of dishes (I don't think I've seen the same dish twice since arriving) a fish bowl appeared with two live fish (each about the size of a stickleback). It was explained to us that these fish were very rare and only survived in certain conditions and altitudes that were unique to this region. The fish were then taken away and returned about 15 mins later having been cooked and ready to be eaten whole.

Then to dinner. Imagine a complex of greenhouses about twice the size of the ones at the back of Windsmore but, instead, consisting of a sort of Chinese theme park restaurant. Inside the greenhouses where gardens of cherry blossom trees, ponds with bridges and stepping stones. Each dining room was its own temple and ours was fit for an emperor with huge high backed chairs around a circular table with motorised serving wheel. Outside our dining temple was a private courtyard with gated entrance. And the food...oh the food...I'll stop before I start to dribble on to my keyboard!