Six cold dishes

Assorted barbecued meat platter

Deep-fried cuttle fish balls with sliced almond

Wok-fried shrimps with green pepper and lily bulbs

Braised shark's fin and fish maw soup with abalone and sea cucumber

Braised sea cucumber with black mushrooms

Baked chicken with black mushrooms and ginger

Steamed sea urchin with egg and vermicelli

Steamed Mandarin fish

Braised mustard with ham

Fried rice with vegetables

Chinese petit fours

Seasonal fruit platter

This was the menu from a recent banquet I attended. There's nothing particularly unusual about it. Virtually every dish has meat or seafood at its center. Rice isn't served until the end of the meal. Fruit punctuates the finale and signals that it's finally time to go.

If you are in business or government in China you can expect more than one banquet a week on average. The typical high-ranking Chinese official will have one or two banquets every evening. They either enjoy them or are adept at pretending to enjoy them. As for me, I enjoy meeting interesting people, but I could do without the food. I never eat meat or seafood so I always have to dance around the interminable parade of meat dishes and hope the wait staff takes away the uneaten dishes quickly. Occasionally, the waiter will let the various uneaten courses accumulate into a traffic jam of dishes which become difficult to hide behind my wine glass and juice.

With a Chinese banquet there is also no choice about what is served to you. I much prefer the individual dishes and choices of most Western dinners. Not only do I enjoy Western food much more, and the individualized dishes, but also the freedom to eat at my own pace. At a Chinese banquet it is impolite to take a sip of wine without toasting someone else for each sip. At a Western dinner one can, of course, take a sip whenever one pleases and without guilt.

One thing a Chinese banquet isn't, is typical Chinese home cooking. I like simple, home style Chinese food - centered around rice or noodles and with plenty of vegetable choices. The simpler the better.