Customer Service

We go into a restaurant in Xining, the capital of Qinghai, a Tibetan province in western China. It's the usual loud pop music, musty, smoke-filled atmosphere. I order vegetarian soup and my friend beef stirfry as I'm not a meat-eater and he is.

An hour later, we have yet to see our food. I walk up to the 4 waitresses sitting and chatting. There are few customers. I ask: "Is our food ready?"

Our waitress looks up at me, innocent and no trace of ill-humor: "Yeah, it is ready." There are no signs of movement.

"Hmmm, will you bring us the food then?"

"Oh! Ok, sure!" Goes to the kitchen.

She brings back a plate to put the dish on, but no food. I also wondered why only one plate holder if we ordered two dishes.

Five minutes later, she brings out the one dish: "Here you are: one beef soup."

Fearing we will not eat until morning if we don't eat what's in front of us, we dig in.