I don’t know if this is what Lieu meant but hedgehogs are noisy little buggers. Snuffle, snuffle, grunt, grunt.
Does it have anything to do with how a hedgehog will eat something, lather it up into a foam in it’s mouth, and then spit it out all over it’s body? 'Cause I don’t think I could handle people doing that at the dinner table.
Ass-Gaske… err… Devil’s Grandmother, down here they do a lot of roadside brush clearing with a tool attached to the back of a tractor that rips mindlessly through anything and everything turning it ino serrated chips. It’s generic namesake is “hedgehog”. Sorry, my reference was a little vague. 
Look, I’m not trying to impugn an entire ethnic group, and of course I added some colorful embellishments. I don’t think, y’know, ALL Chinese are this way or that way or anything. It’s just hard to post much of anything if I have to preface with a five-page list of qualifiers to make sure I cover all the PC bases. Of course the description I gave could be most accurately described as a summary of various things that have happened at numerous meals. These experiences do tend to lodge in my brain, however, and the conflated memory of a year’s worth of trips to Chinatown can leap into mind like I big ugly flashback when I’ve had a particularly noteworthy meal, as I did today.
I myself am a total slob at heart. I went on this two week canoe trip with some other guys one year, and it was an adventure in atavism. We were all but lighting our farts on fire. I’m lucky I didn’t emerge from the woods crawling around on all fours and eating live grubs from rotten logs. A guilty pleasure is to buy a rotisserie chicken at the supermarket, plop myself in front of the tube, and rip greasy hunks of it off with my bare hands and eat them (never when my wife’s around, 'cos she’d kick my ass if she saw me eating like an animal in the living room).
I admit I should find copious mouth noises, a burp or two, reaching, grabbing, snarfing, and so forth, to be a lot of fun. I have nothing against it at all on a conceptual level. I mean, I’m the kind of 34-year-old man who still cracks himself up when he let’s loose with a good belch and his wife yells at him for it.
So I guess I’m a total hypocrite. But I can’t deny it: I get grossed out. Maybe it’s because I’m in my khakis and shirt and in Dilbert mode, as opposed to unshaven, B.O.-stinking Grizzly Adams mode. I dunno. All I can say is, a coupla times, I was just like, oh yuck.
I just checked with a cow-orker and he said he’s heard that and brush hog as well. Somewhat interchangable I guess.
(… and yes, I read your name change musings in the other thread. Cracked me up good, it did.)
Awright, I’m hijacking my own thread:
Are they called hedgehogs because they make snorty noises like pigs? I’ve seen hedgehogs in pet stores, but I’ve never heard one make a noise. I’ve actually wondered why they were called “hogs”, since they don’t look much like a pig to me.
One lives in the bush under my bedroom window and he snorts and grunts and snuffles all bloody night. Cute lil chaps though.
Awright, so I don’t go to bed tonight hating myself because deep down I find I’m realy just a racists pigdog, I did some snooping.
I came up with this site:
http://www.bebeyond.com/Forum/ZS/TableManner.html
I think, perhaps, I may not be completely insane…
I don’t know…if they can’t even spell dining… 
I’ve never had the experience of dining with any Chinese folks, but now that I think about it, what you described is how they always seem to portray Japanese/Chinese people eating in Anime.
Of course my impression is mostly based on Ranma 1/2, so maybe it’s not totally accurate. 
I’ve found Japanese table manners generally to be incredibly demure, way more so than the West - for example I had to leave a restaurant to sneeze - but even so, when eating udong in soup, it’s actively polite to slurp them.
How can you get used to eating garbage? That’s loopy, dude.
Well, the funny thing is, it’s not garbage. If prepared nicely it can be quite tasty! I think we throw too much stuff away, to be honest. Having said that, I can’t do the coagulated blood thing. I admit it: I’ve never tried it. I can’t bring myself to. Maybe it’s delicious. I’ll probably never know, and that’s ok. Little jello-shots of thromboid goodness just don’t do it for me. But knuckes ain’t half bad!
Ever had a knuckle sandwich?
Too hard to spit out the bones.
I would love to try tihs sandwich you talking about :eek:
In Eastern Europe one of the delicacy is intestines soup.
Another site with better spelling…
http://www.chinatown-online.co.uk/pages/food/etiquette.html
I think I’ve committed several of the fauxes-pas listed for Western diners to avoid. I’m certain I’ve done copious “root[ing] around” in the dish with chopsticks for the good stuff. I wonder why this is considered rude. It’s hard for me to even imagine why someone would want to be treated to the sight of a mouthful of chewed-up food, which I find nothing less than repulsive. Then again, I suppose some would find my horrid table manners equally disgusting, though I’m mystified as to why some of these things are thought to be repugnant. I mean, chewed up food looks like…bleah, it’s just nasty!
Oh well, I guess I just gotta learn to deal, as suggested above.
Good article!
My favorite part thus far
Rats! Still, perhaps I will work it into conversation on Calm Kiwi’s assertion they are … noisy little buggers. I’ve only met one hedgehog, and he was a charming little fellow as he sat nervously in the zoo keeper’s hands. They are quite cute, and not very pig like. More like spiky tribbles with faces. They look so little. How can something so small be so noisy, Kiwi?
Well, that settles it. I can never go to China. They’d think I was a total asshole before I even opened my mouth.