Are you hardcore?

My friend from college, Jimmy, is in town these days to get some extra pages stuck in his visa. He currently lives in China’s frozen north out in the wasteland that is Inner Mongolia.

We were coming back from the train station and decided we needed food, so I suggested this little restaurant near the gate in the west of Shuang Hua Yuan. I’ve eaten there before, and while their food isn’t too bad, it didn’t strike me as the cleanest place. Imagine a 40 year old A&W located in the armpits of Detroit and you will have a good visual of what it looks like.

Convincing Jimmy it was fairly clean, we both went in. He’s become a bit paranoid about cleanliness now that he no longer has health insurance. Wimp.

We sat down and ordered some food, and halfway through the meal, I felt something tickling my head. I leaned forward and watched as a very meaty cockroach landed in my rice bowl.

Most foreigners would go positively bat shit at this point, but I took it like a champ. I reached into my rice bowl with my chopsticks, grabbed him by a leg, flicked him back out onto the floor, and resumed eating to the absolute disgust of Jimmy and amazement of the Chinese staff.

After watching the roach crawl around for a minute on the floor, one of the cooks walked over and stepped on him, then mumbled back and forth with the lady at the counter “Gee, there’s a lot of roaches this year. One just landed in that white guy’s bowl. Yeah,” possibly in an effort to save face.

I imagine Jimmy must have been thinking only one thing: Derrick has been in China way too long.

If I were as manly as this guy, I probably would have eaten the roach.