Somethings Fishy

Ellen and I have spent the past few days in Washington, D.C., and it has been great meeting up with old friends from BYU and seeing some of the sights out here. Despite being in the American Capitol City, we have managed to eat in Chinatown twice, at Chinese restaurants. Thus, wherever the chance presents itself, Ellen will forgo whatever famous or noteworthy restaurants happen to be in town in order to procure her fave: fried noodles/fried rice and roasted duck. That is what we chowed down the first trip to Chinatown, for lunch. Later the same night, we made our way back to Chinatown and found a dumpy place crowded with Chinese. As we sat down, Ellen spied a fish tank, and instantly felt the urge to eat one. She starts excitedly pointing to the tank and saying stuff in Mandarin, and the next thing I know some poor cook comes out, and for 5 minutes struggles to get one of these flopping, splashing and thrashing fish into his net. Finally, the fish is netted and quickly placed into a bucket, and hauled behind the kitchen door. A few moments later, I hear some loud pounding noises and Ellen explains "he is killing the fish for us!" all the while smiling with anticipation of the finned finale to our day. A few minutes later, the steamed fish is on our table, and Ellen tears into it like a fat kid tears into a Snickers bar, or like I tear into a snickers bar...The strangest part was, while we were eating our scaled steak of the seas, all the fish in the tank were bunched in the corner, staring at us. We both had this sense of shame. I'm telling you, it is just this strange emotion eating a fish while 6 or 7 other fish, that moments ago were frolicking in the frothy tank with their brother, are now watching him being picked apart with chopsticks. I'm just thinking about the fact that Ellen loved the D.C. Chinatown, which PALES in comparison to the Chinatown in NYC. Does this mean we will eat 90% of our meals with chopsticks in NYC too? This isn't fair-I mean, when we go to Taiwan, there isn't some "Ameritown" I can go to and get good burgers, steaks, french fries, pizza, nachos, and other American fare. Yet, anytime we hit a big city here in America, we pretend we are in China. Nice.