Wedding reception feast in Shijiazhuang City

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Imagine a table full of food. Now imagine more dishes being added so that they had to be stacked to fit. Now imagine it on a spinning lazy Susan so that whenever it somebody spun it to reach a dish on the other side, it knocked over glasses of juice, wine, and tea in its path.

You now have a Chinese wedding reception in mind. A nurse in the respiratory department was recently married to a nurse in another department at the hospital and invited the department to tonight's reception. Dr. Meng was kind enough to invite me along with her. Truly one of my luckiest days to be able to try so many things at once and see a glimpse of the wedding culture. The bride wears red, in this case in a jaunty non-traditional plaid, everybody toasts both entire tables and one-offs with friends, the white wine is nothing of the sort and will knock the unready under the table, there is a bounty of food that would put a Midwestern buffet to shame, and you will wrap things up early with most people leaving before 8:30pm.

Starting at 6:30pm with appetizers of greens, nuts and candy, and Chinese-style charcuterie and cold cuts, dinner grew more and more impressive from there, featuring:

-Squirrel fish

-Peking duck

-Roast suckling pig

-Several varieties of beef, pork, and chicken with vegetables

-Noodles

-Traditional wedding soup

-Quail egg with mushroom

-Steamed buns

-Steamed rice

-Mango shrimp with fried pears - this was one of the tastiest things there

-Yes, there was 7-Up. 7 is considered lucky, and well, who can go wrong with Up as a general direction?

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Photos

This is not the most plates we had - it's just when I let go of the camera to dig in 100%
Note the squirrel fish at the center of the table. Very much a sweet and sour BBQ crispy version of fish.

In the beginning...
Before the table became stacked literally with dishes on top of dishes.