I found myself the unexpected guest of honour at a lunch in Tianjin city, northern China, recently, hosted by officials from the local Foreign Ministry office.
The Chinese are extremely hospitable, and it is customary to wrap up a business meeting with a meal. It is also usual for officials to be accompanied by several hangers-on. That is how it was just me versus nine men.
There were several plates of food on the table, and as guest of honour I had to taste each one first. With nine pairs of male eyes watching, I picked up my chopsticks (accomplished user now) and politely nodded approvingly as I tried each dish.
One I was unsure about looked alarmingly familiar and I decided to give it a miss. But when I had gone through everything else, nine pairs of eyes looked from me to the untouched dish and back to me again. There was no way out without insulting my hosts.
I picked up the food with my quivering chopsticks and started to eat. Nine men threw back their heads laughing as I crunched through my first deep-fried Chinese slug.
I love Chinese food but on this occasion I literally bit off more than I could chew.
There is a humorous Chinese proverb: "Chinese people eat anything on four legs except tables; and everything on two legs except people." Anything edible that walks or crawls on the ground, swims in the sea or flies in the air turns up on a table here.
Cooking and eating are a ritual, and the range of Chinese cuisines is unsurpassed anywhere in the world. Each region of this vast country has its own unique style and way of presenting food.
For example, in the north you have Shandong cooking, with strong garlic-based flavours; central China is known as the land of fish and rice, with lighter more delicate flavours; and you head south for the hotter Sichuan cooking.
A stroll down Donganmen Night Market in Beijing is a must for food-lovers. This market is choked with stalls selling every type of food imaginable from straightforward meat and vegetables to fish or barbecued baby quails. Deep-fried grub on sticks and grilled scorpions and grasshopper can also be found.
Apart from the slug, I have eaten some other unusual dishes during my short four months in China, including turtle, quail egg soup, goose-feet, preserved egg (not recommended) and fish's stomach.
There are some interesting items on the menu in our local restaurant which we have not tried yet. How about cow's intestines, ox's liver, stir-fried eel and shark fin? I'm sure we'll get around to them. Eventually.
A friend of mine recently dined in a snake restaurant in Beijing. The live snake was brought to the table where the head was cut off in front of guests. The blood was then drained, poured into a jug and mixed with alcohol before being served to the guests as a pre-dinner drink. Snake soup and snake meat followed later.
My friend lived to tell the tale, but even in the interests of research I couldn't bring myself to try it.
I only got as far as the front door of the Guizhou Dog Meat Restaurant in Beijing's Haidian district. I couldn't go in. It was the huge sign over the door depicting three gorgeous dogs that put me off. (While dog meat is still popular in parts of China it has been banned in Taiwan.)
Because I was intrigued rather than hungry I purchased some vacuum-packed "ass bacon" in Tia Yuan airport, Shanzi Province, recently. That is one present sorted for the home holiday this summer.
Seafood and fish are very popular in China. In Shanghai a speciality is hairy crab, a great delicacy which costs $10, the cost of a banquet in a really good restaurant.
To eat the crab you pull a thumbnail-sized shell from the underside and use it to scoop out the yellow flesh beneath. I am told the sexual organs are the best part.
Colleagues have also recommended a prawn dish served in a restaurant in Beijing crusted in deep fried ants. Apparently delicious.
And they say I simply must try drunken shrimp - live prawns brought to the table in a bowl of soy and wine in which they literally drown. Immediately they stop flapping about in the bowl you peel off the shell and eat.
There are times when we crave the good old-fashioned meat, two veg and spuds combination. Mother, see you in July. Roast beef, mash, carrots and mushy peas, please. Followed, of course, by your bread-and-butter pudding.