Fine Dining in the Far East

It's not often that one walks through a Pizza Hut restaurant and sees a table of people cutting their mozzerella sticks with a knife and fork . . . at least, not in America! In China, people flock to local Pizza Huts for a unique dining experience, complete with "exotic" American food. We've looked in their menus at the "Birthday Party" section, which includes an introduction to American table manners (a.k.a "eating with a knife and fork"). Apparently all the chinese have gone through this training, because every other person we see there is politely and diligently using knife and fork to cut their pieces of pizza into tiny pieces. Although I've also seen a few people in the States doing this, for me it always brought back images of Seinfeld characters trying to cut up their Snickers bars. Some things just don't seem natural! Of course, we try to blend in and be "civilized" as well, but half-way through the meal we find we've begun to ravage the pizza with our hands like the famished foreigners we are! We've brought some local friends to Pizza Hut here, but I've always been a little nervous, since the chinese don't have a notable love of cheese. Some of them have a very strong aversion to western food (a girl pantomimed gagging once while watching me eat a sub). Fortunately, Pizza Hut has incorporated many chinese choices; the menu ends up looking more like it belongs to a gourmet restaurant. You want steak? Stir-fry? Spicy rice? No problem! And you can wash it all down with a red bean smoothie . . .