Sitting in a Chinese soup restaurant for lunch. The guy across from us was clearly very drunk, and getting agitated. He got up, walked to our table, briefly inspected Ma Lei's chopsticks, then went back to his table.
Next time the waiter came by, the man shouted at him angrily. He was mad at the waiter for supposedly bringing him "bad" chopsticks. What was wrong with them? They were backwards.
I imagine most of my readers know chopsticks well enough to know that they're symmetrical in every respect except that they're tapered: the fat end is for holding them, while the slender end is for holding your food.
The drunk guy had picked his chopsticks up by the skinny end and tried to use the fat end for his noodles, so he complained angrily that his chopsticks were defective.
I'm not making this up. I couldn't make this up!
The drunk guy got really belligerent, threatening to beat up the waiter. Soon the restaurant owner and the rest of the staff were out in the dining area, squaring off with the drunk guy who was still promising to fight them all. The owner pointed to their security camera (which, in truth, probably doesn't even work, not in that cheap kind of restaurant), told him it's patched into the Dalian police department. In the end, they threw him his money back and forced him out of the restaurant without his lunch.
