Hot Pot

So it has been just over a week, and my time here seems to be passing
extremely slowly. I moved in with my host family, which consists of a
mother, father, and their 18-yr old son, who speaks pretty good
English. The first night here, we all went out to get some "hot pot,"
a dish which gets its name either from the boiling bowl of
Sichuan-spiced broth out of which everything from ostrich eggs to cow
intestines is eaten OR the typical transformation of the household
toilet the following morning into a pot of hot… well… ya know.
Anyway, at the dinner with us was a large group of family friends who
all came to congratulate my host brother on his graduation from high
school as well as to welcome me to China. Both these ends were met by
toasting our shot glasses of beer incessantly over the course of the
dinner. From what I pieced together, it pretty much works like this:
Any time you would normally take a sip of your drink to stifle the
rising flames in your mouth, you simply address the table or certain
members of the table and your personal imbibition is transformed into
a reason to collectively celebrate. I realized (only after my host
brother translated it) that the never-ending attempts by numerous
members of the table to refill my glass after each toast was a sign of
friendship and not just an attempt to get the American drunk on his
first day in Shiling. The whole dinner was in Chinese, so to stay
engaged I imagined that I knew what everyone was talking about. All
in all, we had some insightful discussions on topics like juggling and
the rising polio epidemic among South American poultry populations.
Nearing the end of the dinner, I garbled out a toast in broken Chinese
expressing that I was happy to be in China. A statement that is very
much true.