Picking Up Peanuts With Chopsticks

Too Pretty to Eat

The jet lag has finally set in; I find my head bobbing at the dinner table as if the front of my head was laden with lead implants.  I don't want to miss anything but my body is neither able nor willing to cooperate.

This has been a primarily a business trip.  It truly is amazing how many things we learn as we observe.  I never thought we would conduct our business in slippers.  Our shoes are left behind us before we enter the plant.  

Our business lunch yesterday was pretty interesting.  Of course it's fun to watch them keep adding more food to the lazy Susan in the middle of the table.  We take turns spinning the food wheel of fortune.  We reach out and fill our plates using primarily chopsticks to shovel the food back onto to our plates.  I found it intriguing to try to eat salted peanuts with chopsticks.  It could possibly explain the  paucity of obese people in China.  After a while you simply give up or spend way too much energy trying to get the small stuff.  My focus shifts to shoveling rice into my mouth and trying to find either chicken or beef.  Vegetables are truly a great culinary prize.  They are definitely worth waiting for juicy and succulent to the palette.

If patience is a virtue then the Chinese have incredible amounts of virtue mastered at the dining table.  Good things are worth waiting for even if you have to pick them up with chopsticks.