Getting invited to dinner is a universal pleasure that transcends cultural barrier.

Menus and eating utensils differ from country to country: potato-eating Europeans tend to attack their morsels with an array of steel armour like knives, spoons and forks of all kinds and sizes and these tools (and the sequence in which they are to be used) usually bewilder unaccustomed Chinese who are used to a simple set of sticks called, for some obscure reason, "chop-sticks". I am not at all sure where the "chop" bit comes in because the said sticks are distinctly non-"chopping".

Some nationalities are accustomed to use their hands only to scoop the food up. A rather messy affair if you ask me but then, I guess, one can get used to anything, given time, patience and non aversion to greasy hands.

Getting invited to dinner in China should be a prelude to a gastronomic feast "sans pareil", given the enormous variety of Chinese dishes on the menu of even relatively modest restaurants.

Yours truly gets his fair share of dinner invitations as a by-product of business meetings in Shanghai, Beijing, Harbin and, indeed, Kunming. These meetings usually involve endless discussions with middle aged, older or beyond businessmen, many of them looking the worse for wear.

A change of "scenery" after having been confronted with these human wrecks for a whole day is something that I usually do look forward to.

Alas, nine times out of 10 this wish does not come true: the host will, invariably, book a private room, replete with TV, Karaoke equipment and a door that is likely to be closed during the entire ordeal and, ipso facto, I am compelled to look at all those haggard faces for two more hours. Grrrrrr!

How nice it would have been to sit in the public dining room downstairs and see young couples and families with children getting their fill.

Anyway, here we are, in splendid isolation and shut off from the rest of the world in the expensive and exclusive "private" room.

It is rare for the Chinese host to ask the guest of honour, ie, moi, about any dietary restrictions or favourite foods.

Now, this DOES present a problem as I suffer from a rare allergy, which precludes me from eating seafood or anything that swims or grows under water. I do try to mention this and I am usually told with a broad grin that there will be plenty of dishes that I will be able to enjoy.

If I can, I also tell my host that I prefer simple but tasty "normal" cuts of meat, like pork, beef and mutton, as opposed to dog, cat and snake meat, uncooked baboons' brains or unusual body parts.

"Sure, sure, sure" I am invariably told, "this will be a meal that you will remember" and I shudder at the thought that I will.

After the peanuts and the cold appetizers, the first dish arrives on the carousel: A dead fish.

Stomachs are eagerly filled, except mine.

The second dish is wheeled in: Drunken prawns on beds of lettuce.

To give my chopsticks something to do, I tuck into some of the decorative vegetables accompanying the wine infested crustaceans.

Next: Hairy crabs, an expensive delicacy from a special and very faraway lake.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry, your beef is coming next," my hosts promise.

What then arrives is a strange sort of beef: Long white strands of slippery fare.

"Try, it you will like it" I am ordered.

I simply will not proceed till I know exactly WHAT this white slippery mass on my plate is. My host sheepishly confesses: "Cows' muscles; a delicacy and very expensive."

Again, I eat nothing.

Next come slices of "U"- shaped pressed cooked flesh in gelatin. Pickled pigs ears!!!!

Sitting next to the host, I cast an impolite glance when the bill is finally presented: more than 3,000 yuan (including the copious volumes of Maotai, a 60 per cent by volume liquor tasting like a mixture of diesel oil and gun powder, of which I drank not a drop).

I could cry!

Once free of my hosts I hail a taxi to the nearest Mc- Donald's for two "Big Macs", a large serving of fries and a coffee.

My gnarling stomach is instantaneously pacified in pleasant and bright surroundings with plenty of young and attractive faces abounding and all this bliss for a very reasonable 34 yuan.

Will they ever learn?

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