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Published: January 3rd 2012
This year there were four Xmas parties to attend and I opted to attend three of them. Of course, starting off the festive season with baking was a requirement! A few of us gathered at Jane's apartment for an afternoon of mixing, rolling, cutting, and decorating. Since the red food coloring tends to turn pink, we opted to make our cookies green and blue and white, instead. After we got lazy with our decorating (you can only make so many cookies look nice before it gets tedious) our cookies turned into modern art you could eat.
Thursday was my last day of exams and I decided staying home watching a holiday favorite, "Love Actually" was a better, more relaxing choice than heading out to hear the foreign teacher band play at the western restaurant. I knew that I had two more long nights of parties ahead of me and wanted to be rested.
Friday night was the first party. It was held at a hotel in Huadu, the district closest to the college. It was a nice affair and a media circus organized by the city. There were snack foods to eat and bottomless French
wine. We were entertained by numerous songs and dancing. My friend gave a speech about how Huadu has changed in the past five years and how all the changes have improved his life. The number of cameras trained on him while he spoke for five minutes was mind-boggling; most of the people in the room probably couldn't understand all of what he said! The party ended around 8:30 (earlier than we'd thought) and we were given some nice gift bags with information about the city and leather wallets. I don't think we ever decided whether the wallets are real leather or not, even though the leading leather manufacturer isn't too far from here.
Saturday night was the big party at the New Century Hotel. The college told us how much the tickets were and I went with high hopes. I'd been to a dinner costing less at the Ritz a few years ago and had been really impressed and was hoping for a similar experience.
Our school's wind ensemble (including Leo) was playing in the lobby when we arrived and they sounded great! The rest of us sat down at a long table (with our gift
bags) and then realized we should head to the buffet quickly if we wanted anything to eat. Chinese people really know how to maximize "all you can eat" at a buffet and will empty a platter of something good within one minute. (Rather than taking a little and leaving some for the rest of the people in line, they fill up an entire plate with it to feed their entire table. I guess buffet etiquette varies around the world.) I kept looking around for the other tables I was expecting to see, but realized there were only two: the meat and rice table and the dessert table. At the end of the meat table wine was waiting in glasses, lined up like soldiers reporting for duty.
I sat down to eat what little I could (a lot of platters and pans weren't labled but looked like they contained non-seafood) and drink my Chinese wine. Now, Chinese wine is different from western wine. Some people think it's the same and some prefer it. I am not one of those people. Personally, I tend to feel less than spectacular the day after drinking Chinese wine, a problem I dont' tend to
have with western wine. I wonder if there's something in the way the wine is made that causes this. "Fortunately" for me, the Chinese wine had been made more suitable to Chinese tastes in that the Sprite had already been added for me! Since many Chinese have low tolerances or are allergic to alcohol, wine is often added to dilute the drink.
We finished eating by 6:30 or 7pm and all stood around chatting and enjoying each others' company. There was a special show to look forward to, but we weren't sure when it started. Someone found a copy of a schedule written in Chinese. We couldn't read most of it, but we were able to discern that the show started at 9pm. We all looked at each other and realized that no amount of walking around the hotel could help us pass the time until 9pm. Some people left as early at 7:30pm and some friends and I left around 8pm. Others went into town to find fun and then returned to take the bus back around 11pm, while a scant few actually stuck around and went to the show at 9pm. While there was a drawing with
He had quite the crowd
Giving a speech about how the district of Huadu has changed and impacted our lives.prizes, most of the performances weren't anything we hadn't already seen before.
I returned to school and met with a friend who used to teach here but was back visiting for the holiday weekend. It was nice to go out and have a drink and catch up and her some other friends play guitar. It was a perfect end to a lovely Chinese Xmas holiday weekend.
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