Once the saliva settles

Up until high school, I was a major germophobe when it came to food-sharing. By the time I reached college though, I grew accustomed to friends taking bites out of my sandwich, giving me a spoonful of their froyo or taking a sip out of my solo cup. College is no place for germophobes, and I was lucky to have changed my ways, because it turns out that China was not either.

I’m not talking about the health standards, which probably would have driven me crazy if I hadn’t gone out of my way to blind myself to them. One of my friends told me that she saw our cafeteria food dropped on the floor and then gathered back up again to be served. Since I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, as far as I was concerned, it hadn’t happened. Maybe that was not the best call, because I did come home with a parasite in my stomach. I had gone out of my way to eat cooked food while my friends went out for the sushi I craved; I drank warm bubble tea while my friends got the more summer-appropriate option that included ice.

It was fruit that was my downfall -- Eve and I have that in common.

All I asked for was some fresh fruit to supplement my diet of rice, rice, more rice and some measly morsels of meat. I ate a banana a day, but soon that wasn’t enough. So I got some apples. Since I had nothing to peel them with, I moved on to the next best option, which was scrubbing them really well with soap and rinsing them off. With tap water. You know, that Chinese tap water that you shouldn't drink under any circumstances.

And there I was, back home in New York, unable to eat the food I’d been craving all summer and facing a daunting antibiotic regimen. I have no way of knowing, but I would swear it was those apples that got me.

But no, I am not talking about the health standards. I am talking about family-style eating. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we would eat lunch at a big round table with our teachers and classmates. As far as I was concerned, it was the most highly anticipated event of the week. It was a more social and less sanitary version of an all-you-can-eat buffet meal. Our teachers would order ahead of time, and when we got there, food would already be on the table: "mantou" (steamed buns) with a sweet dip, fried pumpkin, spicy tofu that numbed your mouth and Peking duck, if we were lucky.

Serving utensils were not bothered with; instead we all stuck in our chopsticks and reached for the food that squirmed stubbornly as we pinched for it. Just as my eye settled on a delectable specimen, the lazy susan would spin. The dish I desired would wind up all the way at the opposite end of the table, and I would glare at the cruel culprit digging into what should have been my pork buns. Friends and teachers alike were suddenly transformed into rivals, all striving to fill their bellies with the same oil-soaked dishes.

Not exactly familial feelings, you may say. But somewhere amidst the competition, there was camaraderie, and once the dust and saliva settled, you felt a sense of shared accomplishment for having cleared those plates down to the last morsel.