Mr. Fix It

I don’t think I’ve ever broached this subject about life here in China. I’ll preface the following blog with this statement, I understand that I’ve got it much better than the locals (so for those of you thinking, “suck it up buddy, stop your whining”…remember the preface). They just seem to have no idea how to “weatherize” their homes (or perhaps they just don’t, it’s something they’ve gotten used to and see no need to change). The apartment buildings here are basically cement block buildings and just don’t have the insulation built in to keep the heat in and the cold out (that means that there isn’t any of that pink, cotton candy looking stuff used in the home building process). So this winter, I’ve been trying to figure out why certain rooms in the apartment are colder than others (and one is like the garage in winter with the door closed, warmer than outside but not by much). Well, I start to diagnose the problem with the aiyee room which is the coldest room in the apartment. Now we call it a storage room but for many, this is a room for the live-in maids [aka aiyees and hence the term aiyee room] with a separate door that leads to an external stairwell. So the aiyee can come and go from the apartment without using the front door [sounds nice doesn’t it, you can live her but don’t use the same door that we do and for pete’s sake, don’t even consider the elevator]. The door to the stairwell is a steel door so it stays cold and I found it has a gap under it of about 2/3 of an inch (about 1.7 cm for the metric fans out there) so any air easily passes from the stairwell underneath the door and into the room. I know that there are some of you that are now in the “well duh, it took you months to find this” mode….well, we typically close the door to the storage room and have kind of just accepted that it’s cold out there. Plus the weather hasn’t been all that bad until the past week, it’s really dropped off recently (and we even had some snow on the 13th). I’ve found the same problem on many of the other doors to adjoining rooms and so I headed out to B&Q (the Chinese version of Home Depot….but not really with all of the things you find at Home Depot so it has a lot but it’s still limited in scope of products) and picked up some door sweeps and weather stripping for the doors. It’s not much but anything to try and keep the heat in is helpful. The thing about shopping at B&Q is that you may or may not find the help you need and/or the item you need. We’ve been there before to try and get some dryer vent piping and metal tape. Try and explain that to a Chinese person without knowing the words for the items. We did just about all we could with charades, point to the piping, point to the dryer and pointing at tape and indicate we needed to join them together but to no avail. It was never understood and we didn’t get the right tape but I kept searching (after all, I’m a man and I don’t like to ask for help, it’s in my DNA….I know how to fix it even if I don’t know what “it” is and I can find it on my own thank you very much) and eventually I found it (okay it was at work but the point is that I found it). Now to further my point, it’s cold inside of B&Q. Not like Home Depot or Lowes, more like Home Depot or Lowes in the garden area where they don’t try to block the outside temps. So everyone is walking around inside (all of the workers) with coats on to keep warm.
[I’ll sidetrack one more moment to emphasize the point again. Many restaurants also seem to be colder than one would expect. It’s not freezing but it’s also not really comfortable so in many cases, everyone eats the meal with their coats on. Strange but true…now back to the story].
A piece of advice about buying things in China, just because the door sweep package clearly states 910mm, don’t believe it. I think the packaging was perhaps 910mm but the door sweep contained inside was about 810mm. I know I’m not a metric genius or anything but I believe that 910mm = 91cm and I needed an 85cm piece. I got back to the apartment and just stared at it trying to figure out where I went wrong (obviously I was wrong because it didn’t fit). I may not have been able to read the package but the numbers are obvious, it clearly stated in English “910mm” underneath some Chinese characters. Unless the Chinese characters read “This item is less than 910mm” I don’t know how I missed this one. Luckily there was one door that was smaller and I was able to piece together some sections to make the sweep fix. So I covered the bottoms of the doors but it’s still cool and I’ve found more air leaks around door frames so I used some weather stripping to try and block the airflow there. Now, it’s the door frames themselves that are the problem. Now, I’ve got to go back and get some caulking but since I cannot read Chinese, I’m a little more skeptical about getting this since I don’t know exactly what is in each tube. But that’s another trip to B&Q to find out how much I want to resolve this.
Now, in the apartment we have many sliding doors, one for the front door, one in the aiyee room(out to the small balcony) and one in each bedroom (again out to a small balcony). The sliding doors we have are another problem with air flow going under and around the doors but it will take much more work to resolve this problem. I’ll take on that task in the coming weeks since it’s something that I’m used to doing. Fix the small things around the house was a common thing, now I’ll do the same for this apartment and perhaps the landlord will appreciate the effort (if she even notices).
One of the things I can’t fix is the floors; we have “marble” tile in the living room/kitchen/dining room and wood floors in the hall and bedrooms. This tile is cold; there is nothing we can do about it so you’ve got to wear slippers to keep your feet warm. Now carpeting would help but I don’t think they make a vacuum that can handle carpet and I don’t think carpet is an option for any apartment here since it seems that carpeting isn’t a natural fit for people. In the summertime, this should mean the apartment remains cooler (at least that is what I hope) but in the winter time, it gets pretty cool in the room. Some of my Chinese colleagues from work tell me that they wear many, many layers of clothes inside their homes due to the cost of heating. They can see their breath when they walk around inside of their homes. Again (for those that think I am whining) I know it could be a lot worse and I know that more of the locals live with this without complaint but it’s just different for us spoiled Westerners. The heat comes from vents near the ceiling and is positioned so the airflow is parallel with the ceiling and since heat rises (even in China), some of the heat doesn’t reach the lower levels of the room which only adds to the cold floors and cool rooms. Now if we had a ceiling fan…it could make the difference but we have none and to be honest, I’m not certain that a ceiling fan would hold on the ceiling (it may go on the ceiling but I wouldn’t turn it on because when it turns out, it’s coming out and down on your head). I was never much of a ceiling fan guy but you get used to having them help to circulate the air in your house and now I can see where they would be very useful to have. Either way, we’re headed into Spring and that takes us towards a new set of challenges in the apartment…the summer. The summers here are very hot and we hope that the apartment will remain cool during those times. For winter, it’s easier to layer (put on a sweater) to keep warm than to keep cool in a hot apartment. Tammy has forbidden me from wearing my speedos around (try getting that image out of your head) so hopefully the apartment will be cool in the summer. I’ll still probably need to do some weatherizing of the apartment but that’s okay. It’s what I would do at home so why stop now.

Wealth Envy

We were warned many times that the Spring Festival season can be very difficult to survive due to the large amount of fireworks that go off night after night, hour after hour. No matter the time, someone will be lighting off fireworks. Well, we encountered the fireworks extravaganza on New Years, it went past midnight but we were able to sleep since things quieted down enough for us to fall asleep. There have been more fireworks than usual since that time but it was never to the level that we had been anticipating. Well, yesterday (Wednesday) Tammy and I were talking about how this whole thing was a little overstated since we had not yet seen the extremes that we were warned about. Word must have gotten out that some foreigners were dissing the Spring Festival fireworks because last night….it went wild.
Starting about dusk until after 1:00am, fireworks were going off with little pauses in between. Sometimes the pause was less than a minute, other times it was enough time to make you think it was over (but you found out quickly that you were wrong). The fireworks show was ON!!! These were the big bangers that you could not ignore, you heard them and some of the closer ones, you felt them. It was incredible the amount of fireworks going off (and going off, and going off). If you checked out the Wikepedia link I pasted into the last post, you would know that the 5th day of the festival is dedicated to the god of wealth. People light off fireworks to get his attention and try to obtain wealth in the upcoming year. From the show of fireworks, I think everyone was vying for some attention. Warren and Jacob have slept through all of the fireworks for every other night except last night. Warren was awake but didn’t get out of bed, he just put a pillow over his head and fell back to sleep. Jacob…he required a little more to fall asleep. We can’t complain much since he used to wake up if an insect stubbed his toe within half a block of the house. The fact that he slept through the fireworks for the past several nights was a huge change. But, last night we weren’t so lucky. Once he was up, he sat at the window and watched the fireworks we could see (you could say we have an obstructed view and you would be correct) for a little while before he headed back to bed to try and sleep. Me, I put in the earplugs I had and waited for sleep to come. I was a bit over-tired so it took awhile but eventually I went to sleep. Sometime during the night the earplugs came out and so our Chinese alarm woke us again (fireworks in the morning) when the sun came up. I thought the cold would keep the locals from celebrating as much but if this is a down year, I’d hate to see it on a normal year. It’s tough to convey the amount of fireworks and the noise but some who have spoken with us on Skype can hear them going off just like they are here. It’s a broken record but they just do things bigger here, this was the 4th of July plus the New Year’s fireworks, now double it. Not from one location but many, many locations. I find it very interesting that people that have so little can afford to spend the money to get the fireworks that they set off. I guess they would consider it an investment (similar to paying taxes, you put the money in and there’s some hoopla, some noise, some oohs and ahhs during the show but in the end BAM!!! POOF!!! It’s gone and you have nothing to show for it).
So, these foreigners have decided that we will no longer jinx ourselves and we will respect the ability of the Chinese to put on a fireworks display at any time or place, especially during one of their festivals. Now since this was a spectacle to gather the attention of the god of wealth, we found an interesting tie-in the next day. While walking to the market to pick up meat and veggies for dinner, I noticed that there was some cash that someone had dropped on the sidewalk. I saw a 5, a 10 and a 50 RMB note on the sidewalk. We chose to leave it there (didn’t want to be the greedy foreigners) but I thought to myself that someone that set off fireworks might see this as direct result of their “offering”. We looked back and saw some of the locals didn’t miss seeing the bounty and picked up the cash (for them the additional 65 RMB would be a lot of cash (probably on the order of over $400 USD). Also today when we walked over to Starbucks, there was a Maserate out in front of Starbucks. Now there was someone that perhaps didn’t need to put on the fireworks display but maybe they did it as a “thanks for the memories” moment. It’s so interesting to see the disparities in income here; you’ll see people with old raggedy bike peddling around town all the way to the high end cars (Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, etc) all in the same 15 minute walk to Xinga Plaza. China is changing and with those changes come quick wealth for some and for many others it will take time to catch up but the point is that for many, although they may not have everything they want, if they work hard they can have a better life than their parents…isn’t that what everyone wants (regardless of heritage, background or all of those other things that seem to divide us).

Friday update on the fireworks, not too much happening Thursday night after 11:00 pm, some people still letting them go but not as frequent or as many. The problem was that at around 4:00am on Friday morning, people lit off a nice string of firecrackers and boomers just as a wake up call. Perhaps there’s a rooster somewhere with a lighter (in the voice of Foghorn Leghorn, you’re doing it all wrong son). Anyhow, Spring Festival continues here in Suzhou and will go on until the end of the month...Lantern Festival (the official end to Spring Festival). Keep on checking in and see how we are handling the celebrations.

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

February 13th starts the Lunar year in the Chinese calendar and therefore is the true New Year celebration (after all 1.3 billion people can’t be wrong). I’ll start by saying that for many Expats in China, the New Year holiday (aka Spring Festival) is a time to get out of Dodge, for some of us…we stay behind because we don’t have the option to go and take a holiday in another part of the world. For the Chinese, it’s time to head to their home towns and be with family for the holiday. It’s a travel industries dream come true (this is called Chunyun and it’s the largest “human migration” in the world, the numbers of people that travel during this time are unbelievable). Leading up to the holiday, you see the places that sell train tickets with a long line of people waiting to get a chance to purchase their tickets to go home. In China you can’t buy tickets prior to 10 days before you travel so when everyone wants to go home on Friday the 12th….well, now you can imagine the lines of people at the ticket counter on the 2nd. I guess the closest thing we might have is the lines at the DMV. Last weekend as we walked down Walking Street, we saw lines of 300+ people at two separate ticket offices waiting to get their tickets and of course hoping that there are tickets available. Since the majority of people do not own a car they purchase train tickets and bus tickets to get them home. Some have to travel as many as 14 hours by bus to get home (that’s the longest trip I’ve heard for people at work, I’m sure others travel even farther). Even then, they are still left to pick up a cab or local bus from their drop-off point to get them home. It’s just something they do and they don’t seem to complain, they’ve grown up with it and it is what it is. So anyhow, traveling around China during this time is a trying task so this is why many get out of the country. They can’t go to see the sights so rather than stay inside their apartments, they get out. Anyhow, we stayed in Suzhou to see what all the fuss is about.
At one of our favorite spots, Casa Zoe’s, they were holding a 100 RMB all you can eat and drink traditional Chinese dinner on Saturday night. We decided to give it a try since many of the local establishments close due to the lack of employees (and owners) but Casa was open and will remain open during the entire festival period. The manager Lena told us about it a couple of weeks back and we decided to give it a shot since the dining options are limited as I explained (of course, we could eat at home but we usually eat out on Fridays and Saturdays so we stick to our routine like good anal retentive folks). Warren really likes dumplings (or spaghetti, or pizza, or chicken cordon blue or…you get the point) and we know he can eat 100 RMB worth of them (for all of us). We get to Casa about 6:15 or so and they have two people sitting behind a table making dumplings from all the fixins they have around them. They allow us to sit down with them and learn how the pros do it (they used chopsticks to fill the skins and everything else). Tammy and Warren sit and learn how to make the dumplings while Jacob and I take a look at the other stuff. Thankfully for Jacob, there was chicken nuggets, fries and pizza for those Expat children that don’t eat dumplings (hmmm, sounds like Jacob). He got his plate full and headed back to the table while Tammy and I took a look at the other eats while our dumplings went into the water. What’s on the menu you ask….you sure you want to know? Here goes, dumplings (well duh!, pork and beef filled), chicken feet, pig’s tongue, pig’s ear (two different slices, one thin slice and the other a thicker slice of the ear) and pig’s tail (and no it didn’t look like curly fries). The reason for the pig’s tongue and tail is that it represents the end of one year and the beginning of another year (this can also be done with chickens but Casa used pigs). This is on the near table. On the far table is a hot pot option (for those that don’t know, you get what you want and place it in the hot liquid to cook before you eat it). In the hot pot (which smelled very, very spicy, you could see all of the peppers and other stuff floating around) you had several options to put into the hot liquid to cook. These were a little more “advanced Chinese” options. Pig’s stomach lining, chicken intestines, pig’s brain (this is your brain on drugs, this is a pigs brain in a bowl), squid and another meat option that she never explained to us except to say “You won’t like that”. Still more meat options were liver (I think it was liver but I’m not sure from what animal), small hot dog looking things, Chinese sausage and the fake crab meat (lump crab). There were also veggie options for the hot pot, lotus root, mushrooms and potatoes. We looked and considered the hot pot (we like spicy) but we’re still on the “elementary Chinese” menu (if we’ve seen it on the menu in the US, we can eat it, sweet and sour chicken, kung pao chicken, etc.).
So we ate the dumplings (and ate the dumplings) and drank the beer and had a good time. We also tried the pig’s ear, pig’s tongue and pig’s tail. The pig’s ear is different since it’s got the cartilage contained in the very thinly sliced portion but it’s not all bad. A little chewy without too much flavor save what you dip it in or what it is pickled in. The tongue and tail tasted like….pork (really?!? Yes, pig tastes like pig. Of course I resisted the urge to say “Be-beh, Be-beh, Be-Beh, that’s all folks” after eating the tongue). We ate dinner with another Expat family and the 7 of us were the only foreigners in the place. Casa held the dinner more for their employees that could not make it home for the holiday and opened their doors to any customers that might wander in to have dinner. Their menu was suspended for the evening and so it was the Chinese menu or nothing. So we sat at a large group of tables and after about 7:15, here come the employees out to the dinner table to grab some food and a drink and then look to the big screen to watch TV. They were all over the hotpot, it was like Wal-Mart on Black Friday (or so I’ve been told by those that have to be there to get the sales) people pulling the intestines out of the bowl to dump in the hot pot to cook. MMMmmmm, hot pot chicken intestines. They seemed to enjoy them so it’s okay by me, nothing went to waste. Now I was told that from 8:00 – 12:00, you can watch CCTV and watch the New Year’s show. It’s like their version of Dick Clark’s New Year’s show. They had performances from singers, acrobats, and some more odd performances like small children going on stage to show how smart they are (when we got home, we watched more of the show and since the channel we watched was translated, it was very interesting to know the lyrics to the songs they were singing. There was a lot of national pride mixed in with the celebration that wasn’t over the top but just something different from listening to some of the banter from the US New Year’s shows). So basically, they eat, drink and watch TV with family (I never realized that I was Chinese since these are some of my favorite things to do), similar to the US Thanksgiving. Lena indicated to us that since we were there for the New Year, we were now part of the family (look everyone; we’ve adopted some white people…aren’t they cute). We were toasted several times by the workers and had a great time with them. It was a surreal experience since we never really would ever see the people behind the scenes and now we were sitting at the same table enjoying the show (or laughing as Warren kept having issues with his chopsticks and couldn’t seem to hold on to his dumpling).
Happy New Year in Chinese is Xin Nian Kuai Le (pronounced like She-en Ne-en Kwhy Luh) and we said it all night to them and they said it to us. Tammy spent the whole evening saying Happy New Year to everyone we met, like the American Chinese New Year ambassador (to the taxi drivers, the people on the street, the security guards at the apartment complex, etc.), it was funny. About 8:30, we got dressed to head back home. Did I mention how cold it is outside? It was really c-c-c-cold here the past several days. It wasn’t just the temp. but the wind chill. We got some sleet on Thursday morning and it never got better from that, the temperature kept dropping and the wind kept picking up. We may have lived in the South but we still remembered our childhood in the Northern part of the country (damned Yankee) and we know how to layer to keep warm but with the wind, there just isn’t much you can do.
On the walk home (despite the cold, we wanted to see what was happening), it was a fireworks extravaganza! Everywhere you looked, there were fireworks going off. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill fireworks either. Huge mortars setting off the large fireworks displays on the left, then on the right, down the street that way, don’t miss those ones over there. I mean this was like the 4th of July and New Years kicked up a notch since anyone and everyone can buy the fireworks and they do. It wasn’t one large show; it was one show here, one show there, all by individuals. The fireworks were the boxes that you find at Crazy Willys and places just across the GA border that would cost you a lot of cash to get (you know the boxes with 30+ mortars and much, much more). Don’t get me wrong, there were also fireworks from the city that took place at dusk and midnight but all of the rest, those may have been a business but either way, anyone could set them off. AND they would set them off from anywhere. Off the 11th floor balcony at the apartment, check. Right outside the entrance to the complex, check. Right next to the building, check. Bouncing off the building, check. I have to emphasize that these weren’t just a few bottle rockets and whirly things, these were the big bangers so there was nothing subdued about the celebration. No matter which way you looked, you would see something within a few moments. It was also interesting to see how empty the streets were for a Saturday night. Everyone was indoors watching the show with the exception of a few foreigners and Chinese that had their own celebration & fireworks. So why not a couple of Expats???
Yes, we purchased some fireworks (when in China); a string of 10,000 firecrackers (yes, 10,000 firecrackers), some small tanks, some of the small mortars, roman candles, flaming showers and several other types of fireworks. Despite a few issues with getting the darned things lit (Tip #1 – always be sure to have a decent lighter BEFORE you go outside in the freezing cold to light off fireworks) we were able to set them off and feel a part of the whole Chinese New Year tradition. We learned that you can light other fireworks with the roman candles (probably not recommended but I’ll be darned if it didn’t work) and that it takes a long time for a string of 10,000 firecrackers to finish (WHAT!?! and it also affects your hearing just a little). Afterwards, we watched more of the CCTV celebration until it was about 11:15. We headed to bed hearing the fireworks going off for the next hour or so until we fell asleep. The kids slept through it no problem which surprised us but we were glad that we didn’t have any issues from them. We woke up the next morning to that beautiful sound of fireworks going off somewhere nearby and they would continue to go off sporadically throughout the day. Was there a purpose to all of this? Of course there is but rather than re-hash the information, you can find out for yourself at this address; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year. In the meantime, Happy Chinese New Year to all of you back home!

It's Party Time

Time flies when you are having fun. It’s still not really the New Year in China…yet. Chinese New Year will be here in a couple of days and we’re staying in town to experience it firsthand. It should be interesting.

So what’s happening here? I guess I’ll start with the best storyline from 2010….so far. A couple of weekends ago was the company’s annual party. A celebration held every year in January to celebrate the accomplishments from the last 12 months (you remember these right; when companies used to hold Christmas parties….before all of the cutbacks and stuff). It was held at the Grand Metro hotel (oh, you’ve heard of it?) on Saturday night, starting at 5:30 (yes, 5:30). I wondered why so early, I was soon to find out.

What’s so special about the annual party? First of all, the employees are expected to participate in the party (it will explain itself in a moment, please be patient all of you I-want-to-know-now people). Since the Press division opened in 2009 (well duh, that’s why I’m here); it was expected that the Press division personnel provide at least 4 performances for the party. That doesn’t sound too painful until it was also mentioned that the Expats had to put on a performance (now that’s painful). What defines a performance? Pretty much anything goes, sing a song, dance, do a skit, pull a rabbit out of your butt…you know all of the stuff you come to expect from the high class establishments in Vegas. We learned about this about 2 months ago but with my focus being on work (and hoping that it would be forgotten….like a roach when the light turns on; Freeze! If I don’t move they won’t see me), it was pushed aside for the moment but we got periodic reminders that a performance was expected.

So I begin to do some research, what exactly do they do for performances and what’s the downside to it? It turns out that sometimes if you do not perform; they will bring you up on stage during one of the “intermissions” (between performances) and have you do something that is even more bizarre. I heard stories about making someone perform a belly dance and a pole dance so I was a little more concerned with being in the audience than with being on stage. So about 3 weeks ago, it was decided…..drum roll please…….we would…..oh man, I can’t even say it. We would perform a Square Dance routine (audible gasps heard followed by the long and boisterous laughter…you may proceed to reading when you have wiped the tears from your eyes). It was something we could learn in a short time and it would not be a 10-15 minute number. We held two practices which were fun but not because of the dancing but because of the company. We didn’t take it too seriously but we didn’t want to embarrass ourselves (okay, I was more worried about embarrassing myself) so we had a good time learning the routine and getting ready. {Insert your best Southern redneck accent here} Fer all u Yankees out ther, square dancin’s good clean fun. You can dance wif yer sister all night long. It’s no fer all you big city folks that date outside the family. Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’ll probably be hearing from all of you that are closet square dancers, my word of advice….stay in the closet! I’m joking folks, take a breath, after all, I’m one of y’all now. We practiced one week before the party and the night before the party to get ready for our performance. There were a total of 11 performances scheduled for the party. We asked to be on early so we can get it over with and so we were #4 in the lineup. But, first….back to the party.

Upon arrival to the Hotel, we are ushered to the 3rd floor to enter the party. When the elevator stops at the 3rd floor and the doors open, there is a bunch of AJ associates waiting to get in (over 100 people ready to party), it was almost like a lineup to get into the latest nightclub or something (or at least that’s what they show on TV, so it must be true). Everyone gets into the line and as they enter, they are given a sticker to indicate where they sit and are handed a door prize as they enter the room. I was given a sticker with a pig on it (along with some Chinese characters) so I had to find the pig table (unfortunately, the tags on the table were the Chinese characters so I had to look around and play match game. Let’s see, three lines with a line in the middle over a double swoosh with a whos-e-dinger....I had some trouble but I found my table). There’s a camera crew taking photos and video of the entrance to the party so it’s obviously a huge event. It seems strange to me but when in China…. I am sitting with two other Expats and 7 Chinese. It was a little uncomfortable since I didn’t know any of the Chinese but you roll with the punches as best you can. On the table is a huge lazy susan that has 8 dishes. The ones I could identify were duck tongue (yes, I know what this looks like and I won’t explain how I know), spicy bamboo shoots, bean curd, dried fish along with some melon looking stuff, pressed meat stuff, green veggie somethings and I don’t have a clue what the other stuff was. In the center of the lazy susan were 8 large bottles of beer (Did you know that Tsingtao is the official beer of the NBA? Well it is, just ask anyone in China.), and 4 bottles of soda. Later they brought out wine bottles for each table (Great Wall wine…seriously, that’s the name of the wine.). So I sit and look around and wait to see what is going to happen next because I ain’t eating this stuff. No one has opened the beer bottles so at the moment it’s a big tease. Did I mention that this is China and people can smoke anywhere and everywhere and so the smoke begins to rise in the room as they light up (and continue to light up all night).

Up goes the evening’s MCs, two people from AJ that are decked out like they are on an awards show or something. It was really beginning to get interesting now. They introduce the Group Site Leader and VP for Asia who stand up and provide a welcome speech along with some highlights for the past year and what’s coming for 2010. They kept it short since they would speak, someone would translate, they would speak some more, translate, etc. Basically, 2009 was a good year and we expect 2010 to bring better things and enjoy the evening. So as they finish, here comes the food. The menu here, a corn chowder-type (looked like egg drop soup) soup, sliced beef in a gravy (with fat and bones), chicken chunks with peanuts and vegetables, scallops on the shell with glass noodles, smoked hams chunks with celery, sweet and sour fish (the whole thing, head and all), dim sum and a few other dishes. It was about this time I wished I had eaten before I headed to the party. The beer is opened along with the wine and the night begins. After about 15-20 minutes of eating, I am noticing that many of the employees are getting up with drinks and working their way around the room. One of the Chinese at my table pointed out to me that they find their bosses and offer a toast for both to drink (them and the boss). In about 5 minutes, it’s pandemonium in the room as everyone is out of their seat making toasts with their co-workers and supervisors, etc. Now I begin to realize that you have to accept the toast with the Chinese or you would be considered very rude. So, if you aren’t careful, you’d be on the floor after a few minutes of this. I find many of the kids I work with and we toast but it isn’t good enough. I’ve got to toast them individually and in many cases taking just a quick drink of the glass isn’t what they want from me. They want me to drink the glass and re-fill and go again. I’m not falling for it. I switch out from beer to Coke and continue with the “tradition”, some noticed and some did not but I wasn’t concerned. I needed to keep my head on straight, I didn’t eat a lot of food and there wasn’t a large margin of error here. After all, I still had to perform. So this continues and still more food arrives at the tables while everyone is moving around the room, very strange. Then the MCs get back on stage and begin the show.

First up is a large group of Press associates that perform a long skit that I had no idea what it was about or when it was even over but they did it and seemed to do a good job. How to describe it, kids in PJs at a slumber party after spending the day eating nothing but pixie sticks and drinking coke. Funny…I guess but I couldn’t follow it at all. In between the first and second act, a prize drawing where they showed faces of employees on the screen, just flipping through the pictures like 5-10 per second. They had people come out of the audience and yell “Ting!” to stop the picture. The person’s face that showed on the screen won a prize. (Just so you know, Ting means stop). They gave out some good prizes, gift certificates, bicycles, a PS3, foot massager, rice cookers, etc. As the evening went on, they gave out bigger prizes. They would do this game I think about 8 or 9 times during the night (keep in mind now, the party started at 5:30, the first act was at about 7:15, with 11 acts, it was going to be a long night). The second act was an Expat coworker that went up and sang a Chinese song (in Chinese mind you) about the moon. You would’ve thought that Elvis was in the room when the uproar came after he started to sing in Chinese. They loved it!!! It was hard to hear him over the music but he gave it a good show. Once that was done, it was more game time, this time they played a pass it on with toothpicks in your mouth game. The first person had a piece of fruit on their toothpick, the next person had to use their toothpick and stab at the fruit and remove it from the first person and so on down the line. It was very funny to watch, many of the contestants were the “kids” from the Changzhou University that have come to work from the Press division. They looked like they were having a great time.

At about this time, we got up and got ready to get on stage. We had to put on our cowboy hats and bandannas and the women got into their costumes. We stood offstage for a few minutes waiting for our time to perform and got many, many photos taken of us in costume. Then it was our turn to perform. I’ve got to tell you that the stage was not very robust and was very small. We tried to get lined up and then gave the “heads up” about how we needed to move to stay on the stage. Just as the music started (you know, that square dancing music, fiddle and all) we encouraged the crowd and got big cheers as we started the show. We did the normal square dancing stuff and each time we promenaded around the stage, the gaps between the sections in the stage just got bigger and bigger. I thought for sure that someone was going to twist and ankle or something but we made it through without an injury. 4 ½ minutes later, we were walking offstage to the cheers and delight of our audience (always leave them wanting more). It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, I think we did okay for only practicing twice. I know that many other acts practiced for many weeks to finely hone their routines. It could’ve been worse. It didn’t matter to the Chinese if we were good or bad, they loved it either way. This annual party is very important to them and our participation just helped us to fit in even if just for a very short time.

So the acts continue, the act following us was the HR ladies doing a song and dance, their costumes made everyone forget all about our act. I’ll try and post a picture and you’ll understand. The remainder of the acts, another performance from the kids from the Changzhou University, A song and dance by the finance folks, a modeling show from a group of associates where they finished with a very well done dance like one of those boy bands. In between acts, more games. A scavenger hunt (contestants had to collect items from people in the crowd), a balloon popping contest, and other games for the locals to act out. Needless to say, as the night went on the bottles of beer were getting very empty, the bottles of wine were also getting empty. People were going to other tables to pick up the partially drunk bottles and went back to their tables to party some more. Everyone seemed to have a really good time.

The evening ended with a Chinese Opera performance that was really good. The performers had to endure 2 hours of makeup and costumes to get ready for their performance. It was a really good show. Then the Group Site Leader and the VP handed out New Years envelopes (the envelopes contained 128 RMB, I’m not sure of the significance of the amount but it was interesting to see). The employees all showed respect when the envelope was given to them. They took it with two hands (as we have been told to do) and seemed very pleased to have a moment with the top people from the company. Many photos were taken as the envelopes were handed out. It was very interesting to watch. Then everyone headed out to the tour buses that were used to shuttle the employees to the party. This was about 10:30 – 11:00. It was a long night but it was a lot of fun to see how the party worked and watch the employees enjoy themselves. I will have the opportunity to attend the party again next year where who knows what the Expats will do for our encore performance. You’ll have to keep reading on to find out.