Chinese atmosphere in chinese restaurant?

Question

Chinese atmosphere in chinese restaurant?
could anyone describe a bit about chinese atmosphere in chinese restaurant.

Answer 1

Caligraphy on the wall, red decorations(it's a lucky color in China), silk and embroidery materials, chinese style funitures, Buddha, waitress in Chinese traditional dress...

Answer 2

When you say atmosphere, do you mean what the restaurant owner has done to make the decorations and costumes fit in with Chinese appearance or do you mean just the overall experience? And do you mean chinese American restaurants or Chinese China restaurants?

I'll say something about the hundreds of Chinese China restaurants I have frequented. There are differences in regions but generally, they are noisy and not as clean as U.S. visitors would hope. Tables are wiped down quickly between groups of guests with a wet cloth that may not get more than an occassional rinse in plain water. No Chinese would ever continue to use a chopstick that touched the table as it is considered no cleaner than the floor. Oh, but the thermos bottles of hot water are often placed on the floor. Some restaurants provide paper napkins, others provide individual facial type tissue, others provide bathroom roll tissue on the table for wiping your face and some have absolutely no wipe tissue at all. Each and every dish will be shared except the noodle or rice bowls. Each person spits small bones and other unchewable bits onto the table next to his bowl, never into a napkin. Noodles are sucked into the mouth, never wrapped around a fork -- well, of course, there is no fork. In medium or large restaurants, there are usually more large groups than couples. Food dish choice is up to the host although he may ask for some suggestions. No one would ever dare complain or refuse to eat any dish. That would be very rude. Choice of green tea, red tea or hot water is made by the host for the entire group. No personal choice about what to drink.

If you get something you don't like, you can call the manager's attention to it but you won't get much sympathy, rarely get him/her to agree to replace a faulty dish and never get a dish without paying no matter whose fault is the screwup. If you don't like being moved from one table to another, don't accept seating at a large table if you are just a couple. When a group of six comes in later, you will have to move to a smaller table along with all of your dishes. Many restaurants have no greeting hostess who keeps seating order so if you come into a crowded restaurant and all tables are occupied, you should pick one that you think will be finished soon and stand by it to stake your claim. As is common in many situations in China, you have no queue so someone who comes in after you may slip past you as a group stands up to leave and-- you missed your chance for that table.

Whomever made the suggestion of going to dinner is automatically considered the host and he will pay the entire bill. Sharing cost of the dinner is typically thought to be impossible in the minds of Chinese although in the case of a dinner for 20, some men may make money exchanges before getting to the restaurant to make the host less shocked by the bill.

In finer restaurants, conditions are cleaner. The chopsticks are much longer and very slick so you must really be an expert user or the bean powder noodles will slip off perpetually. The napkins are often cloth and arranged flat open with one corner under the small plate that holds the rice/noodle bowl and the remainder hanging down in your lap. Don't stand up quickly or that napkin will likely pull the dishes off the table and onto the floor.

In western China, which is not as modern as the east, most small and medium size restaurants have no hot water supply so they wash dishes in cold water. They boil water over a small coal fired stove for serving plain or as tea but they don't use it for washing. A few restaurants have no water at all and get brick tea delivered in 6 liter plastic jugs. They heat the tea in an aluminum kettle over a coal fire. A service (man on 3-wheeled bicycle) picks up all the dirty dishes, takes them away, washes them and returns them to the restaurant the next morning. A drinking game is popular that involves two guys matching finger numbers -- well, it's too much to explain except they shout the numbers at the top of their lungs and foreign diners are highly disturbed. A few restaurants have "No games" signs posted which usually ensures less chance of game madness. Smoking is allowed and very common at all restaurants, all tables, no "smokeless sections".

In the kitchen there is one cooking burner and one knife (a cleaver, of course) per cook. The cleaver is used for chopping things to bits. Only a couple of dishes involve boneless chicken. Typically it is hacked into bite-size sections so be careful about the bone fragments. Fish is never filet, always either whole or hacked into bite-size parts. The most popular fish is belt fish that is long with tiny fins and hair-thin bones. A small or medium size restaurant may have only one cook. He cooks one dish at a time and makes no effort to cook all the dishes for one table before he cooks a dish for another table so the food dishes arrive at your table one at a time, sometimes as much as ten minutes apart. If you ordered rice, it could arrive soon after the first dish or as much as 15 minutes later even though an electric rice cooker is keeping it hot and ready at all times. The wait staff seems to have trouble understanding why anyone would be anxious to get their rice early. Rice and wheat based food (noodles, jiaozi and baozi) are called "main food" and one form of it is considered basic to any meal. Even if you just want a large bowl of soup with lots of corn and potatoes in it, you still should order a main food dish or the waitress will think you're daft and keep egging you to choose rice or noodles to go with your soup.

In one restaurant in Lanzhou, I liked their way of cooking fish and broccoli. Of course, these are separate dishes, so to get past their habit of bringing the broccoli after 5 minutes and the fish 20 minutes later, I chose to order the fish and rice only. After 15 minutes or so, I would call the waitress over and add the broccoli to the order. That usually worked but once I got the fish and the broccoli was delayed an additional 15 minutes. Were they jacking with me or what?

Overall, it's an interesting atmosphere and you have to be very flexible as the restaurants have a Chinese way of doing things and you are not the boss.