At lunch times the canteens are always overrun with people despite their enormous size. Each of them has three floors, all serving different cuisines. Some are sprawling food halls with tables arranged neatly in narrow rows, fried green pepper and pork slices scooped out of metal trays and served by a crew of impatient, wrinkled men and women from a counter at one end. By the opposite wall, leftovers are dumped into an open wheelie bin, mixing into a stinking soup of chewed bones and unwanted broth, and dirty plates and chopsticks are discarded on a moving conveyor belt which carries them out of sight and back into the kitchen.
The upper floors are nicer. To the north of campus, above the lakes, there’s a canteen we’ve dubbed ‘the round canteen’ for the simple reason that the building is – unsurprisingly – round. It’s polished and clean, and the tables are purposefully mismatched. Some are complete with armchairs and sofas made from a plastic meant to look like leather. A balcony runs around the outside of the building, and there are seats with views of campus. Soft piano music plays unobtrusively from speakers hidden in the ceiling somewhere. It’s used as both an eatery and study space, with plates stacked precariously next to iPads and laptops.
It seems odd to me that I now view a school canteen as comfortable and familiar. I was never picked on at school, nor did I ever particularly fear lunchtimes, but I didn’t like going to the cafeteria at lunch. At secondary school, you were pushed about in the queue and sat in organised cliques – the girly girls by the windows, the boys who played football in the far corner, and the freaks by the dividing wall closest to the kitchen. You never changed table. It seemed to me as though the watchfulness of my teenage peers was exaggerated in the cafeteria. There were even unspoken rules about what you should and shouldn’t choose to eat – paninis were acceptable, cold wraps and sandwiches were fine, but hot food wasn’t cool, and a packed lunch was social suicide.
When I moved to sixth form, I was relieved to be allowed to leave campus at lunchtimes. I never ventured into the canteen, even though I could. This was another new school for me, and I didn’t have a good grasp on how the canteen hierarchy worked. What food would get me funny looks if I ordered, and where would I sit? I didn’t know where the other arts block kids sat at this school.
Can you imagine facing a canteen not only in a new school, but in a new country entirely?
The Chinese university canteen couldn’t be more distinct from that of British schools. There are no rules here, no status quo which dictates your portion size or your table or your choice of company. Nobody cares what you eat; nobody even looks up as you walk by. You can order fried noodles with shrimp or chicken or beef, bubbling hot pot, violently red-coloured spicy noodle soup, huge fried pastries, red bean buns, or bland rice with sad-looking wilted bok choy. You can finish your plate and order seconds, or you can add your portion to the sloppy pile of waste.
I use the canteens as a kind of refuge on days where I haven’t anything to do. They’re comfortable places for an introvert or a loner. Most people sit and eat alone, hunched over their bowls as they slowly suckle on the food held up to their mouths. It doesn’t occur to anyone to feel shy about slurping loudly on soup, or messily flicking noodles this way and that. Everyone is completely absorbed by something on their phone. Sometimes people use bags or water bottles to prop up their phones so they can watch something hand-free whilst they’re eating.
At home, I would sooner have run away than enter the school canteen alone. It was mandatory that you ate in groups – without your clique, you were conspicuous, something sad and unwanted. Even eating a dry panini, I felt watched. It was necessary to eat a panini bit-by-bit by pulling apart small sections with your fingers and popping them into your mouth (taking bites would have been considered grotesque). But here such a notion would be preposterous, incomprehensible. Groups of softly giggling girls and boys dressed in basketball uniforms exist simultaneously with the people who sit alone, and no-one seems to mind the others’ presence. The girls laugh only amongst themselves, and the basketball boys never crack jokes which extend beyond the reaches of their table. I am safe picking my way through the tables carrying my tray, no matter if I’m alone or flanked by friends. I am deliciously invisible.
Tomorrow I will go to the canteen, and I will eat soup dumplings and fried beef noodles. I will admire the soft afternoon sunlight draped across the backs of the wooden chairs, the crunching of my food drowned out by the echoing sound of ladles scraping against woks in the background. There will be someone sat at the table opposite me, a stranger focussed on an unknown video on their phone, whom I will never see again. And I will eat there again the day after, and again the day after that.