Sunday evening, Mr. W and I took my parents and maternal grandma out to dinner for Chinese New Year. My parents were eager for Mr. W to try a Szechwan restaurant in Rowland Heights because of his partiality toward spicy foods and trying new, different cultural dishes. Szechwan food is regional to a mountainous part of China where it’s so cold that the people had taken to increasing the spicy factor in their foods to stimulate body heat and metabolism. We had lots of ma la (numb & spicy) dishes. There’s a particular spice that numbs up your mouth and it’s added to very spicy foods in authentic Szechwan cooking. The numbing thing bothered me a bit and I complained about feeling like I’d been rinsing with Chloroseptic, but Mr. W really took to the food. A lot of the dishes were so spicy that my parents were remarking jokingly on the number of napkins they’d gone thru to wipe the sweat from their brows. I chugged ice water as Mr. W enjoyed the tea; I backed away from the spicier dishes as Mr. W embraced them piled them in his plate. My mom remarked that apparently, I’m the white person and Mr. W’s the Chinese one. Oh, well.

I do so enjoy watching Mr. W enjoy my culture even if I don’t have quite the same appreciation for various parts of it. I’ll blame that on my prior stomach ulcer.