A mickey in my hot pot

Last night, on our way to the night market, we stopped in a restaurant for hot pot (a Chinese version of shabu shabu minus the kobe steak).

The waitress brought over an entire chicken, chopped up, and dumped it into a pot of boiling broth in the middle of the table. She then brought over frozen thinly sliced lamb, fresh black fish, frozen tofu, lotus root, glutonous rods of sticky rice, chinese spinach, boiled peanuts, sweet potato noodles and freshly sliced tomatoes (that only Wei could eat but which looked really good). After the chicken cooked a bit, we ate some of it (but not much because it was mostly bones and feet and such) and then we would throw in some raw meat, let it cook a bit, and then eat it. It was a delicious feast (but not quite a good as the shabu shabu I had in Boston’s chinatown at Shabu Zen) and a nice relief to the cold.

I don’t know if it was the excitement of haggling, the confusion of watching deranged and confused people cheat on each other in a bootleg copy of Closer, or a mickey in my hot pot, but I didn’t sleep at all last night. I was supposed to go hiking today to a village (and mountains) called Ling An but I had to bail out this morning. Perhaps Monica or Andy will give me their photos to post.