the things you learn...

we had one of hops' coworkers over for dinner last night. he's from shanghai, and was in teh US for three months. he's going back to shanghai this week.

since i'd hooked up the SNES a couple days ago, i asked if he'd care to play street fighter 2. i figured i'd have an easy time since i'd played two days in a row. he said he hadn't played since he was very young.

then he proceeded to win 14 straight matches. he told us the reason he wears glasses is that he ruined his vision in middle school playing street fighter 2. i believe it. then he asked where we'd gotten the snes, and i told him we'd gotten it the old fashioned way: bought it when it was new and kept it for 20 years.

he liked the gas grill and said they don't have those in china. i explained that it wasn't just for "barbecue parties" but that i use it all the time for all sorts of things.

dinner was ribs (cooked the day before and reheated - a huge disappointment for me, i dunno how they went over with our guest. he was very polite and repeated that everything was "great", and i dont know him well enough to differentiate the good greats from the bad greats) and some other stuff. what really blew me away was that he didn't know what the ribs were! i thought chinese people ate lots of ribs. i served them as a single slab, and chinese food typically (in my experience!) is served in bite-sized portions, so perhaps he'd had ribs before but never in that form factor? i don't know, he didn't seem any more familiar with them after we cut ribs off one by one.

though he lives in shanghai, he grew up in sichuan, and likes his food very very spicy. i was bummed to hear that since i'd taken the seeds out of the jalapeños that were in the rib glaze. shoulda left them in, not that it would have done much. next time?

he asked about how beer was made (we served him a homebrew) and i explained that as best i could. difficulties arose due to language -- how the hell do you explain yeast? -- and also to the fact that it's been so long i barely remember how it's made. first you boil water, then dump it on your barley, that's like wheat, only it's been toasted or roasted and then cracked. then you dump that water out and it's sweet, and you boil it (again!) and add hops -- those are like flowers, only bitter -- then you cool this mixture and add yeast -- like what makes bread rise, but in beer they eat sugar and give off alcohol -- and in 4 weeks you have beer. easy!

he thought auchentoshan was good, but laphroiag was "great". he said the laphroaig tasted like some herbal medicines in china. you bet it does! i think that last "great" was a genuine one.

i asked him what kinds of things about the US had surprised him when he arrived here. he said that ours was the first american house he'd seen on the inside. this made me sad. this is the end of his second 3 month visit to the US, and we're the only people who'd invited him over? he seemed like a very nice guy, even when he was kicking our asses at SF2. he may go back to china with a bad impression of my ribs, a good impression of hops' hospitality, but I'm afraid he'll think the majority of americans are inhospitable, and it seems hops' coworkers gave him no reason to think otherwise.