Compared to most (non-Chinese) people I know I'll put almost anything in my mouth and enjoy it. A friend of mine who was born in Hong Kong but who grew up in California says that if he's a banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) then I'm obviously a hard boiled egg (white on the outside, yellow on the inside). I'm not quite adventurous enough to eat most of what's offered in Guangdong restaurants and I haven't yet reached the point where I can order my meal still alive but some of my favorite foods as a child included artichokes and asparagus. And my special requests for food to be met at the airport with range from the purely mundane such as decent chocolate or corn beef and liver on rye to slightly weirder offerings like greek olives or proper kimchee.

         However, there are some things I won't eat. Dog. Cat. Fish heads. Pig feet. Duck webs. As yet unlayed eggs. Lungs. Raw tomatoes. Cucumbers. Most anything involving green peppers that haven't been cut up real tiny. And Wenchang Chicken.

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         It isn't merely the rubbery texture of the pink meat and the way that the bones are still oozing blood. Who am I to turn my nose up at that? I eat steak tartare and sushi. So long as the place is reasonable clean I have nothing against half cooked meat. It's more than that. It's isn't merely the way it comes to the table with the head and feet or the way it has been chopped up so that every single piece of meat still has bits of bone that have to be navigated. I could deal with all of that. It's the heavy wobbly fat layer (that would crisp up so nicely if the meat were properly cooked) that looks far far too much like the fat layer does on half closed surgical wounds. I just can't deal with that. When I had half closed surgical wounds that I was seeing on a daily basis I very nearly went vegetarian.

         However, maybe it was something about this resteraunt (which, after all, was in Wenchang District) or maybe it was my body saying "calories, calories, give me calories" but I not only made the perfunctory attempt to try the Wenchang Chicken I ate and enjoyed multiple pieces of it.

         Then, as the meal was almost over, and we were sipping at cups of tea and soup there was a loud BANG from outside. One of our teenagers had gotten ahold of some particularly noisy firecrackers and had decided to set one off. I've really got to do something about my reaction to unexpected explosive loud noises.

         No one at my table had much of a reaction to the loud noise. Nor had any of them noticed yet that my tea cup had stopped halfway to my mouth or that my hand was shaking. And I couldn't do anything about it. It wasn't a total freeze but I wasn't taking the sound well at all. This was the closest and loudest explosion to me since the one that put me in a wheelchair for three months almost six years ago. My pulse was up, I'd started breathing shallowly, and I sat there looking at the tea cup halfway between my mouth and the table and couldn't make my hand move it either to drink or to put it down on the table.

         Around the time they'd noticed and more or less gotten me calmed down to a shaken but relatively normal post adrenaline rush state he set off the second one and I totally lost it. Pulse rate back through the roof, heart thudding, hands shaking so bad it took both of them to hold on to the bowl of soup that had been handed to me, and a total feeling of helplessness. I don't know what would have happened if someone hadn't gotten to him before the third one was lit.

         Before this incident it was still up for debate whether or not I was enough in danger of getting sick that I belonged on truck. After this incident there was no question of whether or not I belonged on the truck as I was in no condition to ride. I needed a nice safe place to curl up, wrap my arms around myself, and not have to do anything at all but let the world go by.

         Thankfully, safe and boring is exactly what I got.