I ordered one once and the waiter didn't know what I was talking about so I just got a beer. He comes back later with a big smile on his face holding a glass with some liquid in it saying he brought me a pickleback. It was premixed. I shot it, it was a lot of liquid, and only once it was in my mouth did I realize they had used bread and butter pickle juice.
It does not mean they are stupid, but it does indicate a poor education, or that they are ESL. Either way, not a value judgement on that individual, but there isn't really a good way to differentiate if someone is dumb or ignorant when they send you something that looks like it was written by a 5th grader.
A few things, how empty and clean it was in comparison (I lived in a city at the time, which could show you how dense Beijing is, like everywhere you go is the most crowded place you have ever been). I also remember waking up from jet lag and my brother was watching that puppet comedy guy on tv and thinking what the fuck is going on here. I was pretty unplugged while I was over there (fall of 2004) so I essentially missed that whole election cycle which was honestly really nice, it sucked that Bush got reelected, but it was good to not be steeped in it while it happened. Since I had a very rudimentary grasp of mandarin at the time I wasn't really engaging which Chinese pop culture either so I was basically just hanging out and talking to people which was really nice. Chinese social interactions are a lot more structured as well, which I found very refreshing at the time, I didn't have enough of a grasp of the language to be awkward so that was also really fun.
I lived in China for a year after college, and that was basically fine since I was already pretty knowledgeable about the country and I went into it expecting to be off balance and that there would be a lot of new things. What was a surprise was the culture shock when I came back to the US. I don't think that the jet lag helped, but I remember feeling really really out of sorts for about a week and just generally in a bit of shock about how different life was here having largely not been exposed to it for a year.