It's a Trap!

So I was at Tsui Wah.

That simple sentence could be the start to a number of different stories, but let's stick with the title. I go to a language exchange almost every week. Ok, at least once a month.

After the exchange is over, whoever is willing troops over to Tsui Wah for dinner. Although the official exchange is over, we usually continue to teach each other a few new words or funny idioms or whatnot over lemon tea and Hainan chicken (What exactly is in the Tsui Wah ginger sauce? It is really, really good). 

If my friend Grace comes then we often split the dinner set. Sometimes she won't be there but I'll order it anyway, when I'm feeling flush. 

It was exactly such a night when I saw that the dinner set was some kind of scallop and chicken deal. It might have had shrimp. Either way, I had ordered that particular set before and really enjoyed the tomatoey sauce plopped over the meat. Kind of like pico de gallo, only cooked. Good stuff. 

When my order finally made it's way out to my table, I gasped. That was no pico de gallo sauce! But, but...what was it? 

There was certainly a sauce over my food, a thick, construction yellow sauce. The last time I remembered seeing a sauce like that was at one of my high school basketball games. The concession stand had a giant vat with a pump on top, so they could ruin the poor tortilla chips with that neon cheese lava.  

I wasn't too pleased, but figured I could power through that meal. There are worse things in the world than nacho sauce. Maybe they had run out of the nice sauce and were trying to improvise. Maybe they saw me and figured I would probably like cheese. Which is a correct stereotype! I just don't like nacho "cheese." 

I picked up my fork and popped a bit of chicken and sauce into my mouth. The moment it hit my tongue, my mouth rebelled. That was no nacho cheese! It took all of will to keep the food in my mouth and not spew it across the table. I did want the people to keep talking to me, after all. But I definitely swallowed it way before the acceptable number of chews had been made. 

"What's wrong?" My friend asked. "You don't like the cheese sauce?"

"It's not cheese sauce!" Revulsion made me shiver. "It's butter sauce. Or more like fake butter flavor sauce. How in the world do they get it this texture anyway?"  

I grumpily ate all the uninfected pieces of food on the plate, leaving the center untouched like a big, yellow island. 

"You know we have a word for that," my friend said, chuckling.

"A word for what? Noxious butter sauce?" 

"No, for this situation. It's called 中伏 zung3 fuk6. A trap. They make you think you're getting something really good, but in the end you waste your money on something terrible. A trap."

Very fitting. And of course, all the way to the register I was chanting "It's a trap! It's a trap!" 

Tsui Wah Wars once again.