Plate O'Bones

I realize that I'm in China, and that I don't get the chance to do that very often. Its obvious that I won't be able to go out and get real Chinese food after this internship is over, and that I will miss doing so. However, when the head chef tells you that you should go out and eat, instead of dining at the hotel restaurant, you begin to rethink your whole approach to life. Or maybe you feel slightly sheepish, and realize...he's making a good point...
Or maybe you just decided one free meal of recognizable food is less important than going out to a strange, possibly health endangering establishment with only pictures of food for you to look at and choose from. It might have sanitary conditions, and the staff might speak English (more likely not) also, you might see flies crawling over some dead fish...but no. A cultural experience is a thing to be desired, and we must strive to have our fill before we are transported back to our own comfort zone, (aka food and health sanitation rules and regulated restaurants) but I digress.
Our head chef at Shangri-La's fine establishment of iCafe approached us interns with a bewildered look one afternoon, as we attempted to sneak in unnoticed by him. We thought we were in trouble, and he is rather a stern and intimidating looking fellow. However, he merely smiled at us and gently reprimanded us on our habit for attending iCafe each day, and even more gently nudged us out into the big world of Dalian's non-regulated food stands.
We wandered down the street in a hungry daze, hoping a friendly face would take over and guide us into a nice and delicious place to eat. No such luck. We passed restaurant after restaurant, indecisive and certainly bemused. Finally, after returning to a previously viewed stall, we picked up or chins and bravely walked past a line of employees into a mysterious and strange eatery. They first handed us a menu. In Russian. Obviously the meal was going to go well from that point on.
Cutting this short, they had us point to pictures, sat us at plastic chairs and tables and we awaited (hungrily) our carefully chosen cuisine. Our first dish, which appeared to be orange chicken was just utterly not orange chicken. It was more like sweet potato fries covered in orange chicken sauce, with tempura shrimp, about five whopping pieces. We picked at it and somehow consumed half of it before the "piece de la resistance" (but believe me...we resisted) arrived. What we picked out, chicken and broccoli, had broccoli...and a pile of sparsely meaty bones. Just bones. We stared at it in sheer dumbfounded horror. I started laughing, and we poked at it with our chopsticks. I think after that point we felt like nothing worse could happen, and there was nothing left to do but laugh. Hysterically. I wanted to run back to iCafe and tell Chef our adventure, how we had listened to him and we had been severely gypped. However, we paid for our plate of bones, picked up our pride and walked defeated and still kind of hungry, back to our apartment.

So, lesson learned. We are not quite up for unguided sampling of the local cuisine.

Also, if I didn't have it bad enough, there are like twelve hundred shopping malls, food malls and grocery stores within walking distance. Ah the misery...