Black Chicken, Eel, Black Chicken Liquor, and the Squatty Potty!

What a day, the good the bad, the downright silly.  So I’m posting this entry first.  This will add some levity to the day.  We left at 7:30 from our hotel to go to Maisey’s orphanage.  I’ll post on the actual visit separately.

Before we left for the nearly 4 hour drive to Taihe County.  We both made sure that we had done our business to avoid any awkward roadside stops.  Well a little more than an hour into the trip, the coffees we drank were exacting their toll.  So we stopped at a rest area.  Now rest areas in China are slightly different that they are in the states.  Let’s start with the similarities first.  Both are easy to access from the highway, both have fuel, both have options for food, and both have bathroom facilities.   But even though the would seem identical from my description, they are not.  First the food is sold by some vendor who just seemed to come up and set up a table, second they are not air conditioned, and it 98 degree, 100% humidity, that’s a big deal.  But if that weren’t enough, when Lisa went to the ladies room, she opened the stall, an bam! No toilet.  Not what we westerners would call one anyway.  They’re called “squatty potties” by the westerners.  It’s basically porcelain tray in the floor of the stall with foot pads on either side.   Simply put a foot on either side and while carefully balancing  and aiming, you squat and take care of business.  Thank goodness Lisa had some tissues in her purse, because guess what?  That’s right no TP!!  We’ve chosen to believe that the general public in China are so particular about which TP the use and bring their favorite everywhere they go.  So common is the practice (we believe) that no facility would even dare to stock just any common TP.   Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on our part, and if you know differently, please keep it to yourself.

Not the actual one we would never bring
a camera into the restroom (for the record)

Anyway, squatty potty adventure behind us we made it to the orphanage.  Again I’ll cover the details from this visit in a separate post.  After our visit, the orphanage director treated us to lunch at a very local restaurant that specialized in it’s very local cuisine.

We started with the regions delicacy, “Black Chicken Soup.” Now while it looked less that appetizing, I figured you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, and be open to new things.  Well first of all the call it black chicken because the meat is naturally black as night, and while the first bite tasted okay, the second closing of my mouth discovered that the bones are still in the chicken.  So you need to remove them as you go.  So that was followed by spicy eel, that's right, eel.  And, to make matters worse the director who was sitting right next to Lisa, in a demonstration of her hospitality piled it on top of Lisa’s plate as high as she could.  I was still miking the soup as a way to avoid the eel, when I heard Lisa say it was very good, but too spicy. So not to be left out I took some and ate it.  It was indeed spicy, but also full of bones, and not very pleasant tasting for my liking.  I found out later that Lisa never did eat the eel but just claimed it was too spicy. 

Black Chicken Soup:
Again, stock image from Google, but it did look just like this.

So after the eel I stuck pretty close to the steamed rice and ate plenty when I heard our guide translate for the director about how the locals make “Black Chicken Liquor.”  Then, the dumbest thing I ever said came out of my mouth before I could realize what I was saying.  “Black Chicken Liquor?  What does that taste like?”  The table immediately insisted I try some.  I did everything I could to back out without creating an international incident, but to know avail.  The 3 women from the orphanage toasted me, and I, not wanting to draw out the whole poultry liquor thing, shot the glass down in one gulp.  As it turns out in China, if a women toast a man he’s required to shoot the drink.  They did not expect me, an American, to do that, and asked if I’d do one more.  Thanks to Jenny our guide I was excused.  For the record in case your wondering, it tasted like chicken! Sorry I could not resist the cliche', actually it tasted like a mixture of Sake and Brandy.  Not entirely bad.

We then started the 4 hour drive home, a little bit more worldly and a whole lot more relieved to be heading back to the comforts of our hotel.