My Favorite Restaurant

As I’m finishing up my program here in Qingdao, China, I’ve probably got one more email after this, and then I’ll be off to Nanjing, China, to start classes at Nanjing University.

As some of yall may remember, part of my work here in Qingdao was to do some sort of community service project. Saturday before last, I completed that project at the Qingdao Museum. My project was to teach a short Saturday course on American holidays for some kids. The kids came to the museum every Saturday for a couple of weeks. Before me, there had been a Texan who had taught them about Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving, but she had to leave, so she couldn’t teach the class on Halloween.

That’s where I come in. I wrapped myself in toilet paper to pretend that I was a mummy, and taught them the history of Halloween and how kids in the US trick or treat. The toilet paper didn’t really hold up on my legs and arms, but it survived on my chest and head. See the pictures in picasa for the frightening results:

As I’m finishing up with my work here in Qingdao, I’d like to tell yall about my favorite restaurant here. Its Chinese name is Brother’s Quick Dishes, but they miss spelled the Chinese word for “dishes.” I’m not sure the guy who owns it graduated from elementary school, so the spelling error is excusable. It’s near my apartment, a friend who lives near me joins me for a meal, generally on the weekends. In the eight weeks we’ve been here in Qingdao, we’ve eaten at this restaurant about twenty times total, trying to get there at least once a week, but usually more often.

Some of my friends asked me for the address so that they could go sometime. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an address. They asked me how to get there, and I had trouble telling them. “Its in a little dirty alley behind some apartments. You’ll see a sign with misspelled Chinese on it, and a little shack and you’ll just know you’re there.” Those were the best directions I could give them.

“Brothers” is on a little dirt street that runs behind several apartment complexes. The ‘street’ is lined on both sides with shack-stores built from left over plywood and roofed with blue, plastic tarps. These shack-stalls sell everything from fairly attractive but extremely cheaply made women’s high heels to buckets, and most things in between. Brothers is located where the street stalls open up into a wider, dirtier market area. Just across from the restaurant, there is a man sleeping in a selling live fish, chickens and other birds, and a chopping block where he’ll kill them for you fresh.

The restaurant’s facilities are not all that much better. The restaurant was built out of left over construction supplies. The walls are made out of old wooden doors and plywood, the roof is made from sheets of metal and a large tarp. The structure is enforced with steel rods. One of the windows is just a large hole where they decided not to put any material. The floors are dirt, leaving it quite messy after it rains. The smell of smoke from the patrons competes with the smell sewage coming in from the market, fighting to see who can get to you first.

The kitchen facilities are also not particularly nice, either. Behind the seven or eight tables that occupy the middle of the room’s space (I hesitate to call it a room), within eyesight, there are a couple of tables for preparation and only two woks for cooking. You really can’t go to Brothers when its busy otherwise you’ll have to wait since they only have two woks and one cook. The water from the kitchen comes down for a little pvc pipe in the ceiling and, like the electricity, is probably being stolen from the nearby construction site.

But the food is seriously the best Chinese food we have ever eaten. The sweet and sour chicken is to die for. Better than anything you would pay for in a fancy restaurant downtown, better than anything you could get in Beijing or Shanghai.

This restaurant has two workers: the cook and the boss/waitor. When we first started coming here the cook had burnt his foot bad, some of the hot coals from one of the two woks falling on him. He had to keep it wrapped in bandages. Those would get dirty with the muddy floor, so he kept his foot encased in a beer box, hobbling around with the thing attached to his leg.

The boss is kind of dim as far as I could tell, but his son goes to Qinghua University, the closest thing China has to an MIT.

The place is mostly frequented by construction workers and sailors. Behind the alley, the Chinese are building eight or ten apartment buildings, each 40 stories high. It’s crazy to watch so much building going on in this economy.

For the pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee

"A day at the Museum" has my Mummy pictures and "Brothers – The restaurant" has the other pictures

Anyways, that’s about it for now.

Bon Appétit,