Party!

This might easily have been the creepiest experience of my life... no, not the wedding. We'll get to that later. But on Friday I attended the annual female faculty party of Nanjing university. I get the tombola (I walked away with a supersize package of cookies), I also get the speeches (well, not in the understanding everything they say kind of way), but then - karaoke? No only did one woman sing 我爱你中国 "wo ai ni zhong guo - I love you China" with an over-the-top opera voice, she also had the matching background dancers who - I swear - were doing a swan lake parody (pretending to be toe dancing in their heavy winter boots) and background singers who were about half a tone off with her. It was so much worse than anything of that caliber I had ever seen! If they would have been completely drunk and this actually was a joke, it would have been fine, but no - everyone thought it was great. There was more dancing and singing. Now I finally know who those women are I regularly see practising dancing on the parking lot in front of my kung fu school. I mean, I'm sure it's a good way for those 60-70 year olds to get some exercise without over-exerting themselves, but putting it on stage? Now, really...

The wedding was great. Mostly because I got to practise Chinese all weekend and learned more about Chinese culture in two days than normally in two months. I just wish I wasn't so lazy - the thing is, I took notes over the weekend so I wouldn't forget anything, but now I really don't feel like typing these notes up for the blog. But due to personal requests (thank you guys for liking my blog) I'll do what my fans expect of me :) ah, stardom is hard...

I got to Ganzhou Friday morning after a rather pleasant train ride. I was sharing the compartment with two guys who were also going from Nanjing to attend a wedding in Ganzhou - but not the same, it turned out.

train_ride

They were already asleep when I returned from the dining car at 20:30, so I also went to sleep pretty early. Thankfully the berth was comfy and it was even rather warm in the compartment. Around 22:30 we were rudely awaken by the 4th person, who kept going in and out and leaving the door open. He seemed quite surprised to wake up "next to" a long-nose woman the next morning - I don't know which of the two was more shocking to him :) My friend picked me up at the station and we went for breakfast at a street stall. Had some tasty fried dough and "medicine soup" - it was a clear stock made from some bitter dried fungus or fruit, supposedly gives you energy after a long journey. He also showed me the main sights - a pontoon bridge made of small fishing boats, fish market, Buddhist temple...

ganzhou_1

Then I met his parents and wife (they were already legally married in Beijing, because that's where they are registered, but their parents insisted on them having a "proper" wedding) and had lunch with the family. I was told to stop saying "thank you," being impolite is part of being accepted as a family member :) I helped the bride to decorate "her new home," which means my friend's bedroom in his parents' place - not that their actually going to live their, since she studies in Beijing and he in Montreal, but tradition is tradition. The groom even had to buy new furniture for his room! So we glued "lucky characters," i.e. Chinese characters expressing good fortune made of red papercuts, on windows and mirrors. We had dinner also with the bride's parents. It was really nice, and my friend's mom a pretty good cook.

The next morning started with the ritual haggling for the bride :) Since the bride's parents are from Henan province, they stayed in a hotel in Ganzhou and the bride also spend the night before the wedding in the hotel. They had rented a suite and pretended it was her home. Three of her friends had also come and I was added to the bride's party so I could participate in all the fun. The fun being that the groom has to make a complete fool of himself and the bride is treated like a princess - that's basically the core principle of a Chinese wedding :) So the groom came and knocked on the door, asking for his bride. Her girlfriends put up a fight and did not want to let him in. He was forced to declare his love, promise to always obey his wife, even when she's wrong, and even sing! Only after he had pushed enough money envelopes under the door did they finally let him in (btw, the "bride's maids" got to keep the money from the red envelopes, so I even made ten yuan). He came with flowers and a traditional Chinese jacket, the bride was sitting on the bed amidst all her skirts.

wedding

They exchanged their rings and then the bride's parents served them food (they had borrowed a rice steamer so they could steam some eggs in the hotel room). Then there was the ritual bowing to the parents and handing over of red envelopes. Now all the groom had to do was find the bride's shows that we had hidden and we could go...

Not without taking a hundred pictures first. Everything was documented by a professional photographer and a guy with a digital camera. That's the main reason I lost my drive of taking pictures, so all the humiliations of the groom are only sparsely documented :) Sorry there are so few pictures of the wedding - if I get hold of more, I'll post them. From then on, all the way to his parents' home, the bride did not have to/was not allowed to walk on her own feet. The groom had to carry her everywhere (yes, with that huge dress). And we didn't take the direct route, our convoy of four cars stopped at a supermarket along the way, where the groom had to carry his wife into the store and buy water. It was quite a hilarious group storming through the store. Then we stopped at a square with a big statue of a bull, where one can rent a palanquin only for the purpose of having the groom (and his best man) carry the bride around. To add to the poor guy's misery, he also had to wear a ridiculous hat and a bow around his neck - the bride got a riding crop to speed him up. You just gotta love this imagery! The bride declined to touch the bull testicles though - I suppose that would have guaranteed a bunch of strong sons :)

Finally we arrived at the groom's house (again, there were fireworks when we arrived, as there had been at the hotel when we left), the bride was carried up the stairs into "her" new bedroom and from then on she was allowed to walk on her own feet. First, more pictures were taken with all groups of people sitting next to bride and groom on their wedding bed with a huge photograph of the two hanging above. Then they served the groom's parents tea, followed by more ritual bowing and exchanges of red envelopes. Phew. So much for the traditional part. Btw, they had friends who held printouts of the protocols in their hands - apparently, not every Chinese has internalized what the proper phrases for all these little rituals are.

Now it was time for the banquet. When we got to the restaurant, there were three(!) other couples who had their wedding lunches there. They were all standing downstairs greeting guest. In order for people to not go to the wrong wedding, each couple was standing next to a sign with their names (and usually picture). Guest started trickling in and, in most cases, greeted the groom's parents and handed them their red envelope. Then they headed upstairs to the dining room - just ignoring the newly weds! I was pretty stunned by that. It was explained to me that they are friends of the parents and in many cases the groom had never seen them before. But still - don't you congratulate the happy couple? No, you don't. You congratulate the parents and hand over your "entrance fee" to the banquet. That's what it looked like. There were of course some exceptions, friends and former teachers of the groom. Many group pictures were taken and all the men who came to congratulate were offered a cigarette - either by the groom's father or his best man, who was clearly new to this - he was a bit stiff in his role, but always had a nicely propped cigarette ready, whereas the father's cigarette pack was already all crumbled up :)

About 40 minutes later we also got into the dining room - a dream in pink! With ribbons and laces and the whole nine yards! They had apparently chosen the "modern theme," because there were also blue blinking lights and kind of up-beat electronic music, and an English sign "wedding" in front. The guests had already devoured most of the snacks (wedding candy, that's just normal candy with wedding motive wrappers, oranges (they had really tasty oranges everywhere in Ganzhou, they're in season right now, very sweet and juicy - wherever I went I was told to sit down and eat oranges)and peanuts). As soon as the couple entered the room (to the sounds of the wedding march and some confetti canon), the waiters started serving food and most of the guests focused their attention on the food instead of what was going on in front - which was a "host" with a microphone making the groom declare his love again and have the couple answer questions about each other. I didn't catch what was going on in front very well, it was too noisy. Especially one table - they seemed to have their own little celebration going on. They kept cheering and applauding to themselves at inopportune moments. Then the couple walked out of the room, the host had finished her job and the couple returned with the bride changed into a traditional short jacket (that the groom had delivered that morning) and pants. They went from table to table (I think there were 16 of them, just short of 200 people probably) to drink with the guests. Best man and bride's maid were carrying bottles for them and depending on what the respective table was drinking (Chinese red wine or 白酒 bai jiu - strong clear liquor) they had to rink the same stuff at least once. On several tables there were more toasts by single persons to the groom or both. The bride cheated - the bai jiu bottle her friend was carrying was filled with water. But the groom toughed it out and by the time he got to our table he looked already a bit under the weather :) Poor guy, he had a really tough time. When they finally got to sit down and have some - by then cold - food, the first guests already started leaving. It was suddenly all over very quickly. apparently that's typical for wedding lunches, it can drag on longer if it's a dinner. I think I now understand why they made it a lunch :) The hole thing was more or less for their parents - but then, isn't that true for most weddings? Maye here it was a bit extreme in the sense that most people only greeted the parents and the only time they spoke to the couple was when they were drinking a toast to them. And the saddest thing of all - I don't have much to say about the food. Anyways, I am glad I was there to witness the whole thing, I had a lot of fun.

Stay tuned for Ganzhou Part II!