The long circus tent in the middle of the street did not surprise me. The locals often hold their parties under brightly colored, striped tents. And blocking an entire road with no prior notice or authorization is standard operating procedure. What I was not expecting was the large neon Las Vegas game show stage. I kept expecting someone to pull a giant handle or spin a large wheel. Despite the enormous cultural difference I think a lot of Westerners would have loved this wedding. Every table came with a pack of cigarettes and cheap alcohol.
Having a wedding outdoors can be romantic in the real world. When it is 30 degrees outside with 100% humidity romance is at the library. Not to read the books, but because it is always air conditioned and the drinking fountains are cold. Not Chinese libraries. But the library we went to when I was a child had the coldest water outside. A good library also has comfortable places to sit. Most weddings do not.
If you only know five things about the Chinese two of them are that they are a very loud people. And they love KTV. This wedding had both of those in spades. (I cannot get that game show stage out of my mind). The tradition is to have a master of ceremonies, let’s say, who introduces the high rollers and tells the guests what is going on at any given time. What I did not like was that this person just kept talking. From the time the festivities officially began until well after we left she was onstage and screaming into her microphone. The only breaks were during the singing.
KTV is the national pastime. The Chinese love KTV more than sex, and there are over 1.5 billion Chinese on the planet, so that says a lot. Even the smallest towns have KTVs. My town has at least five that I know of, and it is a very small town. In addition to the three KTVs every square meter, you can sing to your favorite Chinese elevator music and Air Supply in restaurants, hospitals, schools, taxis, fisheries, on boats, buses, at train stations (although not on the train for some reason), department stores, grocery stores, bowling alleys, temples, cemeteries, my neighbor’s house, and of course, at weddings. Sing is just a euphemism. The proper way to KTV is apparently to scream as loudly as you possibly can. Art and entertainment are relative. As they should be. But music has a few simple rules that I think probably apply regardless of your culture or preference. Call me old fashioned, but I think notes are an integral part of music. If you choose not to adhere to any particular time signature or any sense of rhythm, that is your prerogative. But when singing a song of any style in any language it is probably a good idea to at least pretend to try to hit one or two correct notes. Everyone knows someone who drank a shot of courage and got up there one night to destroy “Copacabana”. At their worst they were angels in the shower compared to the average Chinese tearing apart the average Chinese folk song. Simply put, KTV is an abomination.
At one point I was paying absolutely no attention to the antics onstage and I heard what I swear for a second I thought was a dog being skinned alive. My immediate thought was, ‘They are skinning a dog. It is probably the main course’. This is unfair as dogchops are not nearly as popular as they once were. Had a dog actually been skinned alive onstage I do not think I would have been all that surprised. I was more shocked by the noises coming from what I quickly realized was a child onstage. I think he was trying to sing whatever song was scrolling across the monitor in front of him. Everyone applauded at all the appropriate points, but for my own piece of mind I have to assume that they were just being polite and encouraging him because he was a child. This is unlikely as being polite is not a Chinese trait. And I am not often accused of being overly polite myself so when I complain that someone is impolite that should tell you something. The locals absolutely and habitually spare the rod and spoil the child. They hit their children left and right, but they also let them do whatever the hell they want at any given time. This particular child’s “singing” was bad enough, but the volume was just unbearable. He actually blew out one of the speakers, for which I was grateful. I have no doubt that I was the only person there who considered that maybe they could have turned the volume down a hair.
In the middle of this aural assault the MC began screaming directly at me. I was the only foreigner there, and so afforded my minute of fame. I did not realize that she was screaming at me until I was told so. Screaming is screaming regardless of where it is directed. She asked me (in Chinese) if I wanted to come up and sing a song. I replied (in English) that I did not know any crappy Chinese beer hall tunes. Of course no one knew what I was saying since I said it in English and I did not have a microphone to scream into.
In addition to all the amateurs from the audience the MC sang a few songs, as did the stripper. I realize I come from a puritanical society, and I do not consider myself to be a prude by any means, but it just seems to me a tad inappropriate to have a stripper at a wedding. I had been told beforehand that there might be a stripper. Despite my attempts to clarify this I was still pretty sure that it was just a language issue. Wackier things have been lost in translation. The Chinese are not big fans of public nudity (like the Japanese) and there are no legal strip clubs anywhere in the country. I checked.
I have no idea where this curious custom started or why it continues, but there are indeed strippers at some weddings. And not the classy kind, like Elizabeth Whatever in that horrible Paul Verhoeven film. These are the cheap North Hollywood variety. The stripper came onstage in a sparkling turquoise halter top and matching tight shorts. Her costume fit the stage perfectly, but did not exactly match the bride’s gown. In fact, the bride’s wedding gown was the only thing I saw that reminded me of a wedding. Eventually the stripper’s shiny wardrobe came off to reveal an equally tacky bikini. Unfortunately, she never got completely naked. I did not think that she would even though I had been told that it does happen. Subsequent conversations have revealed that it really does not happen, so there are limits to even what the Chinese consider bad taste.
Speaking of bad taste, we were at one of the vegetarian tables, so there was no eel rectum or feral pig bladder, but the food they did serve was mostly unidentifiable and more aromatic than I prefer outside of a sewer treatment plant. One of the great inventions in the history of Chinese restauranteering is the large Lazy Susan that they place atop tables. Of course, this is to make everything accessible to everyone. What is curious is that these people invented this device and it can been seen at almost every restaurant I have been to, and yet no one at this wedding (or at least at my table) had any idea what it was for. Tiny Chinese arms stretched regularly across the table to reach for the pickled goat testicles in dirt sauce. I watched silently as more than one elbow made its way into some dish or other. At one point I rotated the turntable just to flaunt my foreign ingenuity and one of the guests looked at me as if I was Bertil Anderberg in Bergman’s “Det sjunde inseglet”. I am sure we have all been there.
Three days later I was dragged kicking and screaming to another wedding. This one was indoors, which proved convenient since it was raining, and a notch higher on the class meter. There was no stripper. Strippers are only for outdoor weddings, of course. It was at a “nice” restaurant, which seemed less nice to me as I watched people walk in and shake their umbrellas over food that was just lying out on open tables next to the front door. I have seen some pretty repulsive food handling practices here. By comparison this was gentile.
We sat at a vegetarian table that was far enough away from the stage and where I could sit with a reasonable amount of comfort. In no time we were asked to move to a more crowded table that was very close to the stage and where I had to sit a foot or so from the table since it probably never occurred to anyone that when you put 20 people at a table for 10 there just is not enough room for all those legs.
This one was not quite as loud since it was indoors, but the MC did scream through it all, except when people “sang”. As hard is it still is for me to believe there was actually a woman who sounded worse than the boy at the previous wedding. She was not screaming as loudly as he did, but her bleeding boar voice and complete disregard for rhythm and pitch caused me physical pain.
Since we were no longer at a vegetarian table I was given the honor of watching people eat body parts that most people could not name from animals that most people would chase away with brooms. I watched the servers bring to our table a large bowl of dirty water with a whole duck floating about. The first two salivators merely scooped up some of the rancid soup, but the third used the serving spoon to hack off the duck’s head. Apparently the duck was cooked in such a way that its head could be hacked off with a spoon. I do not know if that is in the marketing. “Spoon hackably soft”. But that head went down her throat as easily as it was severed from its rightful position. Others seemed envious that she got the duck head, and I assumed that her boyfriend must be a happy man since she will clearly put anything in her mouth.
The person sitting next to me was obviously hungry. With great enthusiasm he tore apart several tiny crabs, lapped up three bowls of what looked like rat dropping soup, ate a variety of land and sea based species I could not identify, and sucked on a fish eye. I have made this observation before, but the locals will eat absolutely anything. You can put a plate in front of them with dog shit covered in live maggots on a bed of used koala embryos and top it off with the vomit of a hepatitis infested $5 Thai prostitute and they will suck it down like it is ambrosia. For me the highlight of the evening was when I left the building to go to the corner convenience store for drinks and M&Ms.
The next time I go to a wedding I am bringing a pizza.
1 comment:
Pleeze put some nei nei and mei mei pictures on your blog.
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