Chopstick Betty

Using chopsticks has always been tough for me. Whenever I try, pain and embarrassment overcomes the enthusiasm to use the chopsticks. The embarrassment factor multiplies when you try to use chopsticks in its home country, China! You are not just a dark skinned amusing specimen, you are now a dark skinned chopstick ignorant amusement! So that's the intro to the story of my crash course on how to you a chopstick by "Chopstick Betty"!

Ken - the awesome Sante Fe consultant assigned to take me on the city orientation tour - took me to this amazing Chinese restaurant - Din Tai Fung - near the Yu Garden in Shanghai. They have some out of the world dumplings. Seems they have a branch in LA too, but not sure if the food will be this good there. Ahh, I digress. So the place was very sophisticated, the waiters and waitresses were polite and welcoming. The food was great - dumplings and spinach and Fried rice. The only hiccup in this whole setup was my chopstick wielding skills! But they were considerate and polite enough to bring me a fork and a knife. Cant blame them for not knowing that I am from down south Asia where the only cutlery we use to eat is the plate that holds the food. They don't seem to know that I am from a place where we believe that the human body is self sufficient when it comes to the feeding tools! Again, I digress! And ofcourse, when the restaurant people are considerate, my ego steps in to take stock of the situation and naturally to make it worse. So I bravely go for the chopsticks and see if I can make a fool out of myself. Yeah, I know, that's just rhetorical. I should have known when the beautiful Betty started giggling while pouring out beer into the glasses. Still my ego is lurking around the table and wouldn't let me realize that she is giggling at the way I was handling the chopstick. All I could think was how cute she looked when she was laughing, not knowing it was at my expense! Time passes, one or two dumplings dives on to the table from the chopstick, instead of my mouth. I notice Betty circling around our table shyly and whispering something to her colleagues. I keep fighting with the dumplings and the spinach and even the rice. Yes fighting, because I was not exactly eating them. Part of the food fell on the table, part on my plate and only what was left clinging to the chopstick made it to my mouth! Overall I was proving enough quality amusement to the people around me. Unable to take this anymore, Betty steps in with a very polite, smiling offer to teach me. Though I am pretty sure her mind was thinking (in Chinese, ofcourse!), "Those delicious dumplings should go into the mouth, Einstein, not to the table!". Infact when she stepped in to show me, she did it so swift picking the dumpling , dipping into the soy sauce and placing it on my cup, that for a moment I thought she was actually going to feed me!! Anyway she showed it again, even brought another pair of chopsticks and walked me through the steps. She was genuinely ecstatic that I was able to follow her directions and pick up the dumplings easily. Not that I became an expert, but I felt I had conquered something huge and she was actually beaming with pride.

So that's the story of the beautiful Betty (btw, Betty is not an invented name to keep the girl's identity secret, its her English name!) teaching the ignorant south Asian in the mysterious art of chopstick usage. The simple girl who couldn't bear the sight of a stranger making a mess of the fine delicate art of chopstick usage, the modest girl who spoke only a few English words like Thank you and Please compared to my zero Mandarin vocabulary, the "Chopstick Betty" will always hold a special place in my heart.