FLAVOR OF THE MONTH/REAL CHINESE

Craving seafood when traveling around in China? Me too. There's one fish dish that's both delicious and super simple to make at home – steamed fish. It's a whole fish steamed with scallions, ginger and a dash of light soy sauce. It doesn't get much easier than that. Plus, the light and delicious fragrance of the fish fills your kitchen as you cook.

But eating fish in China can get a bit complicated. In the West, we usually eat large fillets with the bones already removed; think salmon, tuna, or mahi-mahi. Even with freshwater fish like trout, by the time they're served most of the bones are removed. But not in China. Here, freshwater fish are served whole – head, tail and all.

While Chinese cuisine doesn't have as many pieces of cutlery as Western formal dining, at formal dinners in China, everything has meaning, from where each guest sits to how the dishes are placed on the table.

The head of the table is reserved for the host or guest of honor. But Chinese dinner tables are round, so where's the head? It took me a while to get the hang of it as well. You can identify the head of the table as the seat facing where the guests arrive and will usually be marked with a napkin standing up rather than lying flat. The area next to the seat opposite the host is where the server will put food on the table.

At formal dinners, red meat, poultry, and fish are served, along with hot and cold veggie dishes. The word for fish in Chinese is yu, which is also a homonym for “surplus,” so having a fish dish is good luck. When the fish course arrives, the head should face the guest of honor, or with family dinners, the eldest person at the table, as a sign of respect. Along with the fish comes a whole array of drinking customs before the eating starts: whoever the fish head points to drinks three glasses, the person facing the tail drinks four, the one facing the dorsal fin drinks five, and the guest opposite the fish's belly drinks six glasses. Then, before everyone can start enjoying the fish, the guest of honor has to take the first bite. After that, it's fair game.

In certain parts of China, the head of the fish goes to the guest of honor. But more often, the head is never separated from the fish. Instead, the eyes and cheeks are given to the guest of honor. According to fish-related drinking rules, each eye merits three glasses and each cheek two glasses.

When one side of the fish has been consumed, the spine and rib bones must be carefully removed intact before digging into the other side. Although flipping the fish over to enjoy the other side might seem like the most rational thing to do, that's a major no-no in China. Flipping the fish is bad luck.

Don't feel overwhelmed by all the customs when the fish dish arrives. One of the best things about dining in China is how friendly people are. Instead of being given the stink eye for using the wrong fork at a formal Western dinner, in China, locals are more than happy to share their eating (and drinking) customs with visitors. So relax and dig in. There's nothing fishy going on here.