In the US, when you complain and send back food in restaurant, you can expect (at best) a meal discount, or (at worst) a disgruntled waitress spitting in your replacement entree. In Shanghai, it can lead to a shouting match.

On our last night in Shanghai, my boyfriend and I stopped in restaurant near the train station serving Shanghainese and Hangzhou cuisine. We were famished, and ordered a wide assortment from the glossy picture menu: fish in vinegar, sliced pork, braised mushrooms with greens. There was also an odd section for Japanese food at the end of the menu, and my boyfriend started salivating over a picture of the “fresh sushi platter”, piled high with gleaming sashimi. Without thinking, we committed a cardinal sin: ordering Japanese food at a Chinese restaurant.

The dishes came out one by one. The appetizer was good. The fish was tasty. The pork was juicy. Then came the sushi platter, arranged on a tiered tray as though the fish were wedding hor d’ouevres. From afar, it looked great. Upclose, I saw little icicles on the salmon and tuna. The other fish were equally rock hard. It seemed that the kitchen had simply taken the fish out of the freezer and plopped it on the platter without even bringing it to room temperature. So much for “fresh.”

I called the waiter over and, in shaky Mandarin, told him that the fish wasn’t fresh, and asked if we could please send it back and choose something else.

“What do you mean it isn’t fresh?” he countered. “This fish isn’t fresh,” I said. “It’s been frozen, and is still so frozen it’s inedible.”

The waiter called a more senior waiter over. I repeated myself. The second waiter shrugged and said there was nothing he could do. I asked to see the manager. Both waiters disappeared. We waited for 15 minutes, staring at our pile of frozen fish and picking at our other entrees, before the manager made his way over.

I repeated myself for a third time, saying that we could either return the entree or switch it for another.

“Our fish is fresh,” the manager assured me. “We received it freshly frozen from Japan.”

I tried to make it clear that if something is frozen, that means it’s not fresh. Either way, we couldn’t eat sashimi that still had icicles on it. Could we please have it taken off the bill?

“No,” grunted the manager. “This fish is still fresh, so we can’t take it back.”

I raised my voice. He raised his voice. Other diners stopped eating and stared. We went back and forth debating the semantics of “fresh,” until he raised his hands, and grumbled something in his Walkie-Talkie. He carried the platter into the kitchen, and came back with the same platter, the icicle fish removed but the other fish remaining, which had now congealed into a mushy mess. He also gave us the bill, which took off about 10% to reflect the fish that was removed. “There. All fixed,” the manager said proudly.

We gave up, paid, and left. I resolved to never to do 3 things again: 1. Get into a shouting match over $15. 2. Forget that the Chinese, more than most people, absolutely hate to lose face. 3. Think that the definition for “fresh” is universal.

- by Diana Kuan of Indietrekker fame

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