So my last China food story...it's long and probably not that great. But anyway...

At night after work, I had nothing to do. So I'd put on my walking shoes and head out into the city. Shenzhen was 500K people 25 years ago and it's 22 million now. Urban sprawl is an understatement. Everything is in Chinese and I had no idea where to go, so I just walked for miles and miles all over the city. Main malls and streets and into back alleys. White business men are as safe as safe can be - because anyone who messes with them are just shot. I had the run of the city...

Anyway, I walked for miles and started to get hungry for some dinner. The trick is to never eat at a place that doesn't have pictures on the menu. You have to be able to point at something that doesn't resemble the bottom of my shoe. The "good" or better places will put a menu out front of their door so you can see what they have. So I went past many, many places and couldn't find anything completely not terrifying. Finally, almost starved to death I walked up to a joint on a back alley to look at their menu. It looks about like all of the others. At that point, one of their waiters saw me looking and came running out the door to welcome me. This little fvcker literally pushed me inside. "Ok! I guess I'm eating here". It was entirely empty inside without a single other soul - not a good sign.

10 mins of horrible back and forth communication between this waiter and I...and I seriously probably looked like a tall retarded alien to him....I got a can of Pepsi & bowl of Ox tail with noodles. Ok - fine. This will do.

As I sat there, this dude literally sat at my table and intently watched me take every bite. "Oo-Boy! This is sure good" in retarded man sign language was somehow communicated. I guess fake smiling is universal. He seemed very pleased.

About the time I was full and finishing up, the waiter went in back into the kitchen for a few minutes. Upon his return, this fvcker brought his ENTIRE extended family. Like 15 people from the ancient to little babies. They all stood around me and smiled. Then the oldest guy there shouted something in Chinese and they all dashed away. Not 1 minute later, they all came back out carrying huge serving trays of every dish they could possibly make. They cleared tables save the one I was setting at. Each and every person then hand presented me one of those dishes. I was dumbfounded and already full. They all just stared at me eating food.

So....I spent the next hour trying all of these dishes and fake smiling. "Sure is good!". It was so hard not to puke from the food itself and being overly stuffed. At the end of all this nonsense, the old man gathered everyone around me and they took 1 million pics. I towered over these people. Held a damned baby. They were the nicest, warmest and most adorable people on earth.

So apparently, I was the ONLY foreigner to have visited their restaurant. The thing in China is to show others its a good, safe place to visit and eat. So I have no doubt, my tall alien looking mug is on some big poster taped to a window in Shenzhen. "Look! White man likes it! It's safe!".

All of that for $2 US dollars.