Awesome Hotpot Eaters

My friends Ryan (a Taiwanese girl) and Catherine invited me for hotpot earlier this week. We all practice aikido together, but haven't spent much time together off of the mat. They are both English majors, so in case I can't express myself in Chinese (this happens sometimes), I can revert to English.

I met Ryan and Catherine at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall MRT and we walked to a hotpot place (麻辣火鍋). For those of you who haven't eaten hotpot, you sit at a table with a pot of boiling broth, and cook your own meal. First, though, you need to go up to the lighted case of ingredients and select whatever you want in your soup. There's a lot of seafood, vegetables, mushrooms, and cubes of congealed duck blood. You can also order meat--we ordered lamb and beef.

After we got our food and sat down, we started to slowly cook it up in our shared hotpot. Then, what happened next amazed me.

After I could eat no more, Ryan and Catherine just kept eating. I swear, they ate twice as much as I ate. And then Catherine ordered another large plate of beef. "You're going to have to eat that by yourself," Ryan and I cautioned her.

No problem, she responded.

At this point, you might be wondering, "Isn't he embarrassed to be seen in public with two extremely fat Taiwanese women?" Actually, both are typical Taiwanese women. They're skinny.

Ryan ate a large cup of Haagen Daz ice cream while I drank some plum tea, and we both watched Catherine continue eating her hotpot. Halfway through her beef, Catherine said that she was done. She wanted to save some room for ice cream.

Every day in Taiwan is a learning experience. In the States, skinny women eat salads for lunch. Many overweight women eat salads for lunch, but I suspect in private they are probably downing a pint or two of Haagen Daz after work.

I think I will ask them for lessons, and perhaps slowly, slowly, I will become an awesome eater like my friends Ryan and Catherine.