A nice thing about travel is that, separated from daily troubles and annoyances, the mind can free up. Thoughts can wander and old memories bubble up to the surface. Such a thing happened as Ernesto and I ate dinner one night on the trip in Australia.
I suddenly flashed back to years before when my buddy, Mark, and I had traveled in China while I was teaching in Korea. Essentially, we had heard this one restaurant had the best Peking Duck in Beijing. One night we went super early to avoid a rush and get a table. Mark is allergic to peanuts so he had a note written in Chinese that stated this fact.
When we got to the host stand, they greeted us and Mark showed the note. The hostess looked between us and the paper and then pointed at it. Mark nodded and the woman grew very grave. She called over some assistance and she pantomimed for us to follow the other staff.
Beside us was the regular dining room, full of people, but we were taken down this winding hallway to an elevator. The woman who had led us nodded and then showed us “five” with her hands. She clicked the button to take us up and the doors closed.
“What is happening?” I asked Mark.
“No idea… how does this place even have five floors??”
The elevator stops and we step into this gorgeous dining room: gold, red, with candles everywhere. A staff of women and men is at the door and show us to a table in the middle of the room.
The rest of the room was completely empty. Like, no one else was there at all. So it’s me, Mark, and a staff of ten waiting on only us in an elaborate dining hall… It felt like Beauty and the Beast where Belle is like “I’ll have a snack” and then everyone in the house cooks a 4000-course meal for her.
So we sit down and they give us menus. Mark, again, pulls out his note because, at this point, we wonder if our Chinese friend in Korea had pranked us and written something like “We are American foreign emissaries who require private dining” on the paper.
The woman near Mark gravely nods again then takes a step back. She got into line with the 6 other servers so that we were surrounded by the staff. It looked like we were foreign diplomats. But Mark and I are twenty-three, in t-shirts, and like just staring at each other. “What do we do?”
Mark was always the communication leader so he very cordially turns to the nearest wait staff and goes “Duck. No peanut.”
This was evidently enough as the staff went to work. They brought out a full four-course meal. We were the only ones in the room the entire time, so they’d put down the dish, then just stand near us. The minute we finished a plate, they’d whisk it away. In the US I can’t imagine a restaurant putting ten staffers to work for two idiots who can’t even say “duck” in their language - WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO A DUCK RESTAURANT.
At one point, midway through the meal, Mark and I asked for a picture with the staff.
“Picture?” Mark, the ambassador, said.
What followed was one of my favorite pictures from that trip. Me, Mark, and two Chinese women who look the most miserable two people can look. In their heads I just imagine them thinking, “We have to wait on these bozos?”
So we finish the meal, and I have a moment of panic.
“Mark… like… we had a private wait staff. Did we order something insane? Can we afford this?”
Mark was relaxed and simply mimed for the bill. Always looking for a reason to panic, I was imagining the Beijing police busting in and making us wash dishes for years because we couldn’t pay the 5,000 bucks for the duck. No peanut. Mark had already had a weird encounter when he looked up a US-based blog at a hostel and a staff member just stood behind him the remainder of his time using the computer.
We’re on a list, I thought. We’re never making it out of China!!!
But, of course, everything was perfectly fine. The dinner was around $50 a person and the staff nicely showed us back to the private elevator to go out.
Once we were outside, Mark and I both tried to figure out what had happened.
“What was that?”
“Do they have a whole peanut-free zone on the fifth floor?”
“Did they think we were like celebrities?”
And, to be honest, we’ll never know. But if you want to find the magic peanut-free floor, just go to the restaurant and use Mark’s Chinese-English skills.
“Duck. Mystery floor. No peanut.”