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Q: Have you gained Chinese eating skills?
For instance, are you able to easily separate bone bits from meat? Can you crack open and eat seeds and nuts with your teeth? Are there any other useful eating skills you've learned? I still haven't gotten the nuts thing right, but the separating thing has worked really well for eating oranges and not crunching on the seeds.
I can't crack open the seeds, but I don't really like those sunflower seeds. I could always separate the bones from the meat. Another thing I learned how to do was opening jars so I could get my peaches. The jars in China are sealed tighter than what I was use to.
I have most of the eating techniques down, even eating peanuts with chopsticks. Sunflower seeds, other seeds, no problem. I can keep up with my pile of shells on the floor with the best of them.
I can do the meat off the bone as long as the bones aren't razor sharp splinters.
Seeds Yes
Bones Yes
Only thing I struggle a bit with is getting fish of the bone. My patner usually does this for me or I use my hands.
Sunflower seeds I've been doing since I was a kid. Crack, separate, spit.
I can tie cherry stems with my tongue.
It'll be a breeze.
Stop laughing!!!
Still haven't got past using chopsticks to eat those wide, flat noodles. People laugh at my efforts. Those slippery, thick rice noodles are a problem too. Bones are pure and simple not my friends.
Even with all the disguise prosthetics of the Mission Impossible team I'd still never get my covert spy thing down.
I've pretty much mastered the chopsticks. When I first got here, many a person was pelted with the peanuts flying from my kwaizi as I attempted to pick them up. Now, no problem.
The bone thing is still a bit of a challenge. I use my fingers. My intake of fish has taken a sever downturn since I've been in China. I am just now getting a handle of the big boned fish, but the smaller boned variety, forget it. Ever since I got skewered in the roof of the mouth by a particularly pointy rib bone, I usually pass.
Shelled nuts I don't eat, becaue of a pecan/walnut oil allergy. I can eat cashews and peanuts, but they usually come without the shells. All in all, my local eating skills would be given a C minus!
I have mastered chopsticks to the point I can pick up peanuts out of the dish one by one without dropping any even when I'm drunk. I can eat anything with them.
But HOW do people deal with shrimp? In one year I have yet to figure this out. Many people here seem to deshell the thing in their mouth and spit them out. I can't (won't) do this. I will pop off the head with my chopsticks, and then attemp to deshell with them as well. Once this fails, and it always does, I just get down and dirty and use my hands.
Have you ever watched a local eat a chicken wing with chopsticks? Too funny.
Jnusb416:
Yes, I also have trouble with the shrimp. I don't know how they enjoy them that way, and I end up peeling it with my hands too. The first (and last) time I used chopsticks to eat chicken wings, I kept dropping them and got a stain on a shirt. They weren't good anyway, no meat. I still have trouble with larger things, like a big piece of meat with bone, or a potato chunk that's especially slippery.
MrTibbles:
I set my chopsticks down and peel shrimp with my hands like the barbarian I am!
TedDBayer:
back home the shrimp is deveined, always thought that was shrimp poop
