We are on vacation in a new city. Being adventurous tourists, we want to try the local cuisine. Wandering around this morning, looking for breakfast, we saw a restaurant that seemed to be doing bustling business. There were a lot of people inside, workers seemed to be fussing over their open pots, steam was everywhere, it was your stereotypical Chinese breakfast place.
We were a bit puzzled over the choices of dishes. Most things didn’t seem to be typical breakfast offerings. It was strange even for China. But we are on vacation, we thought. Let’s not let our prejudices get in the way of meal adventure. So we ordered several dishes and began our breakfast experience.
We were unimpressed. The food didn’t taste very good, and it was expensive. We paid over US$10 for the two of us, which by China standards is a scandalous sum to pay for breakfast. Worse, we weren’t full.
We left our food half-eaten (and less than half-enjoyed), and slouched out of the restaurant, feeling like tourist failures. We can’t live like locals! we mourned. We are hopelessly in a rut! We are cultural snobs and look down on everyone who isn’t like us! We are terrible people!
That’s when we saw Pizza Hut.
Like many American fast-food companies, Pizza Hut has done a good job of localizing their menus. A customer in America would hardly recognize the menu. Significantly, Pizza Hut in China has a breakfast menu.
Slightly ashamed, we slunk inside, shuffled to a booth, and reluctantly opened the menu.
Oh, my! Â They have oatmeal! And French toast! Yummy yum yum!
As a concession to being in China, we got soybean milk 豆漿 instead of orange juice. And we feel like tourist failures, but at least we have happy tummies.