Dragon de Oro, un Restaurante Chino en Buenos Aires(Ken)

Our friend, Charlie, those of you who follow the comments on this blog know him and love him as “Chas,” is visiting. The other night, a group from my class at UBA got together for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Yi Le, from Shanghi, organized the evening and got us a big table in the back. She did all the ordering so that we could have as authentic a Chinese dining experience as possible in Buenos Aires.

Charlie had just arrived that morning, so he was having a bit of a surreal experience—he was in Buenos Aires, at a Chinese restaurant, with people from six different countries, and the only common language was Spanish.

As if that was not surreal enough for him, while we were there, a Chinese wedding reception took place in the room where we had our table. We stayed around to watch. Guests began to arrive and a Hostess/Karaoke singer served as emcee.

The groom stood at the door of the restaurant with a silver tray of single cigarettes each decorated with a red band around the filter. Reception tables had nuts and candies and fruit juice. The happy couple arrived to firecrackers, music, and applause. Then the food started to come out—lots and lots of food.

Then the traditional rituals took place. As the bride and groom stood next to the hostess, she instructed the groom to put his face in a bowl of powdered sugar to retrieve individually wrapped candies that he then had to transfer mouth-to-mouth to his bride. Then they had two red balloons placed between them and they had hug until both balloons popped.

There was a tower of wine glasses that were filled by the couple with cascading Argentine Malbec wine before the room toasted the couple. They then went from table to table with a tray of candy giving a piece to each guest and clinking glasses in a toast with each person at the table before moving to the next table.

It was a fun evening. Charlie had a unique first night in Buenos Aires and we got so visit with our friends from UBA.