Eating in China

Many of our meals were included in our package, but we did have to venture out and find the odd meal. The most memorable went as follows:
The day before the race, we had to fend for ourselves at lunch time. We weren't too concerned as we would be having a "carbo loading pasta meal" that evening, with the other runners. At lunch time we headed to the ala carte restaurant in our hotel and asked if we could have lunch. "Only
Chinese" we were told, but we nodded greatfully and followed our hostess into a small room furnished with a big round table seating 10, with red walls and much gold paint, curtaining, and cutlery. There we sat, just Megan and I.
The menu was in Chinese, but our hostess had a smattering of english, and so asked us what we would like. We said vegetables. She said: "what is vegetables?" I said "carrots?" she said "yes". I said "mushrooms" she said yes. I mentioned some other vegetables. She said yes. I asked again "vegetables?" but she still didn't know what a vegetable was. So I said: "Carrots are vegetables, mushrooms are vegetables...." and so on. Megan says I used my no nonsense voice, but she scuttled off and in a short time we were presented with our lunch:
Potato cut into slivers which resembled noodles, with carrots; a bowl of rice; and a bowl of noodles in a soup, with a piece of bok choy floating on top!
And that was lunch!