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.