Bucket list: Platter dinner

The first time I saw a platter dinner (I made this up because I don't know what the translation is...) is in the school's foyer.  Students and professors were celebrating the start of the school year.  A platter dinner is traditionally part of some celebration in villages where people get together and share a meal from the same pot.  Literally.  All ingredients are already in the pot and the point is to keep digging through the layers.  I thought it looked really cool and a "Chinese culture" experience I should probably check out, so I added this to my bucket list.

I totally did not expect to check this item off in such grand fashion!

Hale and Frankie invited me join them at this event.  I don't even quite know what organization this was for but it must have been a big deal because the head of HK government was in attendance as well as many high level government officials.  (All on stage...)  After a bunch of speeches--one guy was particularly memorable because he spoke, more like yelled, a mixture of Cantonese and Mandarin throughout his speech that made me laugh more than anything--we were instructed to stay in our seats because the Guinness Book of World Records people were on site to certify the largest ever platter dinner event.  Supposedly about 22,600 people in attendance.  I said to Hale, "Um, I don't know how to top this when you come visit me..."  Hahaha.

                                    Plastic table covers and plastic chairs.  Going for authenticity!

Have to wait for everything to boil a good half hour before taking the foil off (or the world record could have easily been the largest group of people getting food poisoning at once)

Shrimp, fatty pork, fish balls, mushrooms, some kind of root vegetable, chicken, duck, pig skin (it was actually super yummy--tasted kind of like tendon)

Hale thinks we're gonna win one of the grand prizes...heh

With Hale and Frankie

There were a lot a lot of people!  We were right by the harbor.  It was really awesome to be part of this.  To have yummy food, with this as our backdrop... 

along with 22,000 of our nearest and dearest...lol