Dirty = Authentic?
So all the foreigners around here are all hyped about the little restaurants in the village near our school.
"You all want to hit up the village and grab something to eat?" one of them will say to another.
"Yeah, I love that place. It’s so authentically Chinese," another will reply.
They rave about the food and how good it is. The funny thing is, most of the Chinese teachers won’t eat in the village. They tell me it’s too dirty and they don’t think it’s healthy to eat dirty food. What a concept huh? This just in: Dirty food may not be healthy! Still, I had to check it out for myself and see who I was going to side with on the matter. One of the guys and I went to this little hole in the wall which he is ecstatic about. I must say that I couldn’t argue with the prices. I paid 4 yuan (about 50 cents) for a bowl of decent tasting noodles.
I did notice that the man making the noodles had a cold and kept wiping his nose as he was cooking. But hey, if it’s boiled, it’s clean right? I’m not TOO squeamish so I let it go and enjoyed the steaming bowl of noodles.
"Isn’t this so good?" my dining companion kept asking me. "I really like the ambiance of it," he said as he gestured towards the rest of the room and the kitchen. "It just feels like…China."
I nodded and began another topic of conversation.
"You know, John taught the restaurant down the street how to make steak fries," he said. "Now all the people from our school go there and eat steak fries and smoke pot (yes quite a few of the foreign teachers here are pot smokers). That’s why I don’t like going there much anymore."
"Because they smoke pot?" I asked.
"No, because there are always other foreigners there. I like it to feel more like China. So I found this place and started coming here. It’s more authentic like that."
Authentic. I started wondering if the word was joining the ranks of "nice" and "cool." I could hear myself testing it out during a regular day.
"How was your weekend, Josh?" someone might ask me.
"I had a good weekend. It was very authentic."
"That’s authentic," they’d reply and nod their heads. "Hey, my friend took me out to eat at this authentic little French restaurant," one would say.
"French food! Very authentic," I’d say.
Our meal ended after we chatted about things which I don’t remember or particularly care about. After we paid for the noodles and were on our way out the door, I stopped and tugged on my friend’s sleeve.
"Hey check that out," I said and pointed toward the woman washing our dishes. She placed the bowls in a dirty bucket of water and wiped the remaining food out of them. Then she dipped the bowls into a cleaner looking bucket of water and wiped them off. After that, she stacked the bowls on a shelf. They were ready to be used again.
"Oh well," he shrugged. "As long as we don’t get sick."
I’m betting that these foreigners might not be so forgiving if they saw this kind of attention to cleanliness at their favorite restaurant back in the USA.
But, oh well. It’s authentic.
