Lunch with Gu

Being that the start of the games isn't until Saturday, we still are going to new venues and meeting photo marshalls and competition managers. Today Mark Dadswell (staff shooter based in Melbourne) and I checked out a few venues and then wanted to stop for lunch before our afternoon/evening soccer games. We have been lucky that this year Getty has three drivers to take us where we need to go. The one problem is the drivers don't speak a word of English. Thank goodness for Xiqin, an assignment editor based in our Beijing office, as she can usually translate where/when we need the drivers to be.
However, today, Mark and I wanted to stop for lunch and Xiqin was unavailable. We knew we wanted some local Dim Sum (the speciality of Guangzhou) but had no idea where we were or what any restaurant was called as we were in a region that neither of us had been to before. After driving around for about 30 minutes we finally pointed at a restaurant and decided to give it a shot.
Gu, our driver for the day, has driven Mark and I a few times so far. We wanted him to join us for lunch rather than sit in the car like he usually does and wait for us. However, the drivers, like most of the service industry in China, don't accept gifts/tips or handouts so they always turn everything down. We finally were able to convince Gu, with hand signals since we couldn't communicate any other way. Mark began pointing to his mouth and shoveling imaginary food in and then pointing at Gu. After 20 minutes or so, Gu understood what Mark was doing and accepted.
We went to a local place, where we were the only non-locals there. The guy with the Aussie accent and tme from Los Angeles and we stuck out like a sore thumb. However, since we have been eating Dim Sum for the last few days, we knew a few things to order by pointing at the menu and guessed on a few as well. We wanted Gu to order something for the table as well since he should know the local food well. We were hoping for something amazing that we never had before. Well, Gu ordered something we never had before because he ordered the chicken feet and beef stomach intestine. Mark and I kindly passed and stuck with the shrimp dumplings, pork buns, broccili, soup dumplings and fresh squeezed orange juice.Gu was a great lunch companion despite the fact that we couldn't speak to him. He was kind enough to fill up our tea everytime it was empty even though we wanted him to enjoy lunch like he was a friend of ours. I wish we were able to speak to Gu to find out something/anything about him.