Heya,

Finally had some time to wander around the neighbourhood this past week (given that it's National Day (国庆节) break n all) and see if there was anything good. I guess all I can say is that it's a quiet, suburban neighbourhood. Not much going on.

Truth be told, I was looking for a place to eat on Saturday night but didn't want to go to a place that had people drinking.

Why?

Because then the inevitable conversation of "Hello foreigner! Where are you from?!" would ensue and... it just wasn't something I was ready to do.

Normal conversation? Sure.

Drunken "Heyyyyyy maaaaannnnnn!"? Maybe not.

Anyway, I finally found a rather quiet place serving jiaozi (饺子, "dumplings") and only had a few people inside, and they were not drinking.

Finding a seat, I noticed that one table had skewers (串儿) and jiaozi. So I asked the server if they also had those. He said no, but that I could order them from one of the nearby shops.

I decided against it, thinking that I could find the skewer restaurant later on.

So, looking at the menu, it became clear all they really had was variations of jiaozi.

Again, looks intimidating, until you realize that all they serve are variations of water-boiled dumplings.

This made me think of a recent social media post trying to teach "restaurant Chinese", possibly in an effort to ward people off from ordering the "wrong thing".

The problem is that most Chinese restaurants specialize in only one type of dish, very few offer everything, and if they did, then they'd probably have pictures anyway.

This jiaozi shop's menu is a good example.

The menu shows that there are several types of jiaozi (dumplings) available, but none that would be hard to eat if it doesn't suit your fancy. Health and moral restrictions aside, the worse that can happen is you get vegetable dumplings rather than meat dumplings.

Further, as this shop specialized in jiaozi (饺子), other shops may specialize in 米饭 (rice dishes) or 面 (noodles), with their variations consisting mainly of meats (肉) such as chicken (鸡肉), 羊肉 (lamb) or beef (牛肉). If you're really concerned, just look for 狗 as some people are offended by it, but you would be hard-pressed to find it in many shops.

So, if you're looking to impress your date, study the few characters in this post and then head on over to your local Chinatown, look for the characters you recognize, and order like a boss.

Oh, the one other mistake that can happen, particularly when ordering 饺子 (dumplings) is that you mix up or disproportionately add more 酱油 (soy sauce) rather than 醋 (vinegar), giving you a much "heavier" dipping sauce.

Match the characters and impress your date. You're welcome. ;)

Hope that helps ;)

Steve