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At a first glance, you would not have given this restaurant a second look and to this day I still can’t remember it’s name. We went in, not really knowing what to expect. It was most definitely not a popular tourist place, so we lacked the confidence which one might have from reading travel guides. In truth we’d been looking for a bar our friend had told us about, instead, after wandering along slightly lit up streets, we stumbled upon this pseudo-pub restaurant, mainly due to our inability to read Chinese and phone maps not being the most accurate. It gave a neon glow onto the street which was multiplied as you stepped inside. The air was thick with the legal smoking of cigarettes and circulated by the ever-present ACs. It was filled with groups of bib wearing Chinese families who chattered enthusiastically, tossed cigarettes and beers around and engulfed crispy fried peanut balls (we were also served some but never told what they were called), surround on one side by posters of European teams and footballers and on the other, cartoon depictions of lobsters being caught and cooked. Since we’d been looking for a bar, we only proceeded to order drinks. The host however, via a translator, informed us that he wanted to treat his Western guests with a house special, baby lobsters in sauce, all for free, all he asked in return was a photo with us. A flurry of questions succeeded: were they REALLY going to give us LOBSTER for FREE? Our brains couldn't compute how we were about to be given, what for us was a luxury and a delicacy, for free. Then a round of questions followed to see whether the girl in our group who had quite a severe nuts and seeds allergy could eat the food, and after extensive Google Translating, resulted in her joy, assured that she could. Finally, we agreed, and a few minutes later we were provided with plastic bibs, gloves and ramekins. Next came the baby lobsters. Any thoughts of guilt we may have felt that we were eating the baby of a species left us as soon as the food arrived. A steaming plate of glorious, glossy red shellfish, slathered in garlic and chilly. The challenge of figuring out how to break eat them gave the sweet reward of soft lobster flesh, extraodinarily flavoured by the a sauce, the contents of which were as undefinable as the taste of it was unforgettable. It was inevitably a messy business: juices splashed, sauce dripped, bibs and limbs got caught but that made the experience all the more memorable. It helped us bond as a group and gave a restaurant to which I would not have given two cents at a first glance (and maybe even avoided due to the high presence of smoking and drinking men) a place in my memories of the trip which was unparalleled throughout the rest of my travels. Needless to say, I also have photographic evidence of it, because we did of course pose with the owner, it was really the least we could do, sweaty from the humidity, glistening in lobster juice and still slightly blown away by the unpredictable experience we had just had, coming into closer contact with the parts of lived China than we had before. I sometimes wonder what he did with the photo and whether we now sit in between the Manchester United posters, beer adverts and lobster cartoons, waiting to be seen by any other tourists or customers who might be drawn in by the neon glow, engulfed by the noise and smells and treated to the delights we were. And I wonder how many would actually go in upon seeing the neon glow and receive a treat, and how many wouldn't give it a second look and potentially miss out on little gems.