Congratulations Vickie and Oliver!

When you travel to a foreign country, there are certain things you have to do in order to truly experience the local culture. In Paris, you see the Eiffel Tower; in NYC, you might attend a Broadway play.

In Hong Kong, you visit Victoria Peak and have dim sum.

Dim sum is a traditional Chinese meal involving small portions of a variety of dishes served with tea.  Legend says that there are more than 1000 different dishes — ranging from meat dumplings to steamed lotus seed buns.

With recommendations of friends in the U.S., Amber, another UNC student with whom I’m traveling, and I decided that we would make reservations to enjoy a proper dim sum experience. Unfortunately, we didn’t do our homework first. Each of us having a vague idea of what the meal was supposed to entail, we left our hostel with hungry stomachs. We were expecting to see carts of food like in old American films. We had decided to go to an all-you-can-eat dim sum restaurant so we could sample all the various delicious goodies.

For 70 Honk Kong dollars, or about $10 American, we decided to eat at a restaurant along Hong Kong’s waterfront “Boulevard of Stars” which was overlooking Hong Kong Island. When we arrived for our reservation, the hostess directed us to the forth floor. As we stepped tentatively out of the lift and onto the red carpet, we suddenly were surrounded with lace, flowers and wedding decorations.

Thinking we had gone to the wrong floor, we started looking for food and waiters and causally dressed people — things that tend to indicate a restaurant. One man, who looked like he might be a waiter, motioned for us to come into a room and pointed to a table where we took our places ... right in the middle of a wedding reception.  There was a cake, a frantic mother-in-law and a banner reading “Congratulations Vickie and Oliver!”

We were the only westerners in the room, and we were clearly out of place. You could tell we weren't Chinese, but we were also casually dressed. People snapped pictures of the bride and groom — and of us.  Before we had even ordered a few people walked by just to stare at us.

Once the waiter arrived, we were ready. Having already gone through the menu the day before, we began to check the boxes of food we wanted. At the top of the menu it said “8 dishes per person.” Great, right?

We  thought we could try it all. Assuming this to be the suggested amount rather than the maximum allowed, we each ordered eight dishes. Our order was passed around waiters and waitresses and hand-covered grins appeared from every corner of the room.

Did we not order properly?

Still confused by the laughter and not realizing our mistake, the food came out.

Amber and I began to eat, and eat. And eat sum more, and dim some more. After five dishes had arrived, the waiter stopped to explain that the others would be a few minutes. Others? We quickly realized that we had thirteen dishes to go.We had steamed dumplings, fried dumplings, soup, wantons, buns, pork balls, noodle dishes, vegetables, cakes, fruits and tea. People were staring, we were laughing, quite embarrassed at our dim sum faux pas.

Baskets of buns were stacked four and five high and we kept trying to eat more and spread around the food so it would at least look like we had consumed a decent amount. An hour later, we decided we had two options, neither of which looked good: be either the Americans who ate everything, or the wasteful americans who ordered more than they could eat.” An unfortunate decision and some wasted food later, we asked for our check. People began to get up and again look at us. This time, their eyes were fixated on the immense mountain of half-eaten food stacked on our table.

The bride and groom, ceased to be the main attraction as camera flashes pointed in our direction. We sat, faces red, internally giggling and toasting Vickie and Oliver with last bit of our tea.

And although we completely messed up, we were able to enjoy a Chinese cultural meal while getting ourselves a dim sum education the hard way.

Annie Clark is a junior political science and psychology major from Raleigh, NC. She received a Phillips Ambassadors scholarship to study abroad at Mahidol University International College in Thailand.