Ever since we visited Peru, and the invention of Charada - Spanish Charades - Louisa and I think of ourselves as somewhat professional Charades players. For those of you who don’t know what Charades is, it is the use of body actions, without speech, to describe a word or phrase to another person. For example, when acting out “escoba”, one might signal: sounds like cobra, and then slither like a snake... [video reference]
Our experience in China has been nothing but amazing – especially the food. Going into China, we had very low culinary expectations and expected at least one hospital visit due to my Bubble Boy allergies. It has been the complete opposite and has taken the two of us by surprise. We owe our great food choices to our Charada training in Peru and at the Sawatzky household. Here are a few examples:
1) Slurping an imaginary bowl of soup while rubbing your tummy with a smile ended like this:
2) Discovering how to Szechuan Hot Pot by having the owner mime the actions to us got us this:
3) Pointing at fellow diners’ dishes and hoping for similar food resulted in this:
4) Waitress taking Louisa to the back kitchen to have her point at the food we would like, looked like this:
5) Pretend coughing on a pharmacist to receive extremely inexpensive antibiotics to kill a nasty throat infection. Yes this isn’t food, but still part of the game (no picture).
So the next time you want to feel the real China, go to U&ME Restaurant and only order from the Chinese menu by only acting out what you want – it will not disappoint!
