He dashed a clean white cloth over the surface of a corner table, and pulled out the chair. “You need menu?”

Even if it was in English, I probably would not have been able to make much sense of it. Instead, I told him, “Why don't you just bring me something you think I'd—No, make that something you like yourself.” Heaven only knows what pallid version of his native cuisine he might deem suitable for a white woman. Then I added, “Just nothing with pork or shrimp, please.”

It was only when he had taken himself through the door and was carrying on a full-voiced and unintelligible conversation with the cook that the belated thought occurred: Chinese people were rumoured to enjoy eating dog, and rat.

I told myself not to be squeamish, and fingered the pair of chop-sticks lying beside my plate, feeling the eyes of the other diners on me.

My food arrived quickly, although the earlier patrons were still waiting for theirs. One of them, a boy of perhaps fourteen, said something to his two older companions. All three watched me reach for the thin bamboo sticks.

They seemed more amused than disappointed when this white person's clumsiness with the chop-sticks did not come to pass—I had just spent three weeks in Japan, eating with sticks slicker and more delicate than these, and the skill had not deserted me in crossing the ocean. I grinned at the boy, cautiously seized and lifted a scrap of what appeared to be chicken, and held it out to him for a moment before slipping it into my mouth. He grinned back, and then frowned and said something to his companions.

Having been through this before, I knew what was puzzling them: I was using the chop-sticks in my left hand. I held up the empty sticks, clicked them together, and then bent over the rest of my meal.

The dishes contained neither dog nor rat, so far as I could tell. The soup held a tangle of chicken's feet, by no means the strangest food-stuff I had been faced with in recent months. The waiter watched surreptitiously until he had seen me suck the flesh from the bones in one quick between-the-teeth motion, then smiled widely. The other bowls appeared to be largely vegetable, although his English got us no further than the aubergine, which he called by the American name, “eggplant.” One dish was hot enough to bring sweat to my face, the second was heavy with garlic and tiny black beans, the third both tangy and sweet.