These past couple of nights I’ve been invited to lavish banquets by the parents of some students in my school (some of the students aren’t even mine!). The dinner I went to last night was, I think, the craziest Chinese banquet I’ve been to. It was just men, 15 men; some were teachers like me, some were school officials, and some were government officials. It turned out the host is Huaihua’s head economic official, or something like that. The food was plentiful and had some cool dishes you don’t normally find, viper for instance, which our host loudly boasted to everyone cost 300 rmb a kilogram, about $44/kg. The viper was hard to eat but the beautiful patterns on the skin made it a oddly fascinating piece of meat.
The dinner quickly reached a level of craziness that I do not normally get to experience here in China. The culprit: wine. Usually beer and baijiu (an evil 100 proof sorghum liquor) are what Chinese men want to drink. However our obviously well-off host bought wine, around 15 bottles worth, because he told me teachers can’t take baijiu. While that is true for the most part and though I have a deep rooted fear and hatred of baijiu I’m not sure wine was a better choice. In America and Europe we sip wine, getting our glasses filled halfway infrequently during a meal. In China men like to drink wine the way American college students take shots of tequila during Spring Break. Our glasses were never more than a gulp’s worth full and were constantly being refilled by the two waitresses that watched us closely the whole night. We drank these tiny glasses of wine every couple minutes for hours. I was surrounded by men with bright Rudolf’s nose red faces.
The conversation was all over the place and people were getting embarrassed by what the host was saying to me (we sat next to each other, seating was done by seniority). I was told that I should find a Chinese girl and marry her, later someone shouted that I should find a Chinese girl and rape her. The two female waitresses watched and listened stone faced. People complained about China’s government, about the lack of democracy, and about the one child policy. The host was particularly annoyed at this law, though he has two children, one of whom is living and working in the UK. I gave a toast to the unity of China, this was in relation to Taiwan. Play to people’s tastes, that’s what I say, especially when surrounded by drunk powerful Chinese men.
At some point a bowl of baijiu with a weird little dark green sack floating in it was placed in front of me. No one knew how to say it in English, besides my friend who had been translating for me was wasted. Today I learned that the weird little sack was in fact a viper’s gall bladder, fresh and raw from the viper we had just eaten. Here is what they look like:
Then the waitress, who was in a fit of giggles the whole night, used a couple tooth picks to pierce the gall bladder and spill out its contents into the strong liquor. The organ’s insides had an evil dark green shade, think the evil witch of the west. I watched as the silty insides slowly permeated the whole bowl. Everyone watched me stand up and shout out some deep throated manly toast before I downed the whole bowl, gall bladder and all. Immediately a waitress gave me a big mug of green tea. No one else had a big mug of tea and I think I caught a flash of pity on the waitress’ face as she walked away from me. All in all I couldn’t be happier that I was lucky enough to drink a snake’s gall bladder, it was a kind gesture on the host’s part and one I won’t soon forget.
-A tamer version of my viper gall bladder cocktail
UPDATE: You can buy your own snake wine here.
