So this past week was exhausting. You would not believe it but I had the opportunity (if you can call it that) to attend two Chinese weddings. Now I have already been to another Chinese wedding and I have already blogged about it (here).

This time was an entirely different experience. The first wedding was a little more normal simply because JJ and I were both regular guests of the wedding. Actually, earlier in the day, I was invited to a computer exhibition which was hosted by a technical school who I have been working with to find workers.

This exhibition was quite interesting because it so closely resembled the kind of final presentation day that I took part in when I graduated. At my school, UCSB, we spent two full classes preparing for this one presentation day to give a fully professional presentation on a project we had been working on for a half of year. The first class was primarily spent making the project, designing the plans, thinking of ideas, writing some code and learning some of the high level sophisticated techniques for creating a high-level professional and commercially acceptable project. The second quarter was initially to be told by a more enthusiastic teacher that our ideas were not genuine, they needed reworking, to practice our speaking abilities and our crispness, and eventually to put together a top-notch presentation as if we were presenting to a group of investors potentially giving us loads of money.

So that was the premise at my university and as the people that saw the projects know, they were fucking awesome, excuse the expression. In fact, I thought my project was on the lower end of impressiveness and we spent an unbelievable amount of time on it and it had a very vast range of elements. So now back to the present. This day of presentations was absolutely different. I understand the premise of the projects could possibly have been different and also the school which held the exhibition is not a top-level UC school, but the projects were not very impressive in my mind. They had no genuine qualities. There were no attempts to be inventive or creative or inspiring. They were all things I could probably write myself in less than a week. In fact, some of the projects I know I could have written in less than 5 hours. (Keep in mind all of these projects were done in groups of at least 3 people, sometimes up to 5).

So being not that impressed by any of the projects, I was invited to be a judge of this competition, sitting beside 14 fellow members of industry who were also picked to rate each of the competing groups. Of course the school invited me to this competition with the assurance that I would have a translator because, after all, how can I judge a competition if I don’t understand more than 10% of what the competitors are saying. Being China and being the land of false promises, there was no translator. JJ can translate, they said. Of course, but you know, even a person who speaks good language will have a difficult time translating a live exhibition in a very technical and professional range. So the translation was pretty much non-existent.

So to make a long story short, I ended up judging these competitions, struggling to keep my eyes open. Following each presentation, we were given the task of rating their performance on a white board, which was then tallied up at the end of the competition to determine several winners. I would perform some kind of sneaky eye movements just as the voting would begin, just to make sure my opinion of the presentation I just watched was similar to the opinion of the Chinese judges sitting to the left and right of me who actually understood what these students had to say. Despite not understanding though, I was surprised how much I could gauge their project without any language understanding whatsoever. During this enduring process, they setup breaks so that everyone did not sit through the entire show without stretching or moving around. Its its primitive form, this was a good idea, but instead of giving everyone a break, they let the students perform some amateur type shows and songs and poem reading, which basically forced the audience (and the judges to remain seated for the exhibition’s entirety.

By the time the exhibition was finished, we had to rush out and leave because our first wedding was about to start. The groom of the first wedding we attended was a good friend of JJ’s (I think a middle school classmate). By the time we arrived at the wedding party (which in China is the actual wedding), we were about an hour late. No worries though, they were still in the greeting process. Since this was the second wedding in China that I had been to, I had some ideas about what to expect. The first thing that is pretty funny is how they (they being people in Shanghai) are mixing Chinese tradition with estern tradition. Upon first seeing the bride and groom, they had this kind of custom movie poster with a large photo of themselves in this romantic pose with a romantic movie title that escapes me right now. They have on very Westernized wedding clothes, the groom in a clean-cut tuxedo, the bride in a beautiful white dress. In fact, the first wedding I attended, they also had this same kind of movie poster displayed upon entrance.

Quickly though, I noticed the Chinese elements of the wedding. The bride and groom are stationed at the entrance to this ballroom that is part of a hotel / restaurant which often holds weddings and wedding parties. They are waiting because when each guest arrives, they should present the couple with a special red envelope, inside containing an amount of money for the bride and groom. The amount changes from couple to couple, I gave 200 RMB ($30) to my first wedding, but this was an agreed amount that each co-worker gave in my company (it was a wedding party for one of my superiors at Pubiao). Since this wedding was a bit more personal (regarding JJ’s relationship to the groom) we gave a combined amount of 700 RMB ($100). This is a pretty extraordinary amount for a single event in China, quite expensive if I do say so myself.

Anyway, the whole concept of the Chinese wedding is an interesting one. There seems to be a completely different aspect of the wedding in China that is so much more culturally backed than the typical wedding in the US. In fact, I guess part of it is because I come from a liberal part of the country with liberal parents, no religion and no tradition, but I get the impression that most US weddings (unless religiously defined) are done with the desires of those people that are getting married and less about what other people in the US do (or what their parents do, or whatever). In China, everyone seems to have the same style wedding, or at least a consistent variation of a wedding. I guess a better way to say it is that the range of difference between Chinese weddings and US weddings is dynamically larger.

For those of you who are not completely up to date with the quasi - traditional Chinese wedding (which is the style that I have experienced 3 times now), I will explain the basic layout and procedure. First, you all meet at a large banquet hall, usually in a hotel that holds weddings and serves ‘wedding style’ food. The bride and groom are always at the entrance of the banquet hall and each guest, upon entering has a picture taken with the couple, which will eventually be sent to the guest. Also, each guest, as I explained briefly before, is subtly required to bring a red envelope with cash. The bride has a best woman, the groom has a best man. Part of the best woman’s job is to carry the things (purse, makeup, jacket) of the bride during the entire wedding process. She also carries a special bag containing all of the red envelopes so her job is very important. The weddings in China are typically pretty large, the three I attended had over 100 guests so you can imagine how much cash the bride and groom collect from those red envelopes (assuming each guest brings $30, which is low, that is at least $3000 cash. Keep in mind that the biggest bill in China is $15).

Once all of the guest have arrived, the wedding proceedings start. The primary purpose of the Chinese wedding is to eat. The process of actually getting married is, at least to most of the attendants of the wedding, not so much important. The food is always excellent at the wedding and this seems to be one of the primary judging points of the value of a specific Chinese wedding. It would be pretty unheard of for a normal guest to say the wedding was good because it was so beautiful and the bride was so lovely. The wedding party is about eating, drinking and sharing a good moment with the bride and groom. Also, you gotta think that each guest giving a pretty substantial gift. So they really expect a good wedding, which means a fancy dinner and good environment. I’ve heard that the tables usually cost about $25-30 per person and they serve dishes in seafood including big shrimp, prawns, lobster tail, sharks fin soup, pineapple flavored fish, clams and a bunch of other great food. Really, the food at a Chinese wedding is quite extravagant. In addition to the food, each table has drinks including a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine. White wine in China though is not what you would imagine white wine being. It is called baijiu in Chinese and its a very traditional alcoholic drink which is always consumed at wedding. Think of it as rice wine with 50% alcohol (100 proof). It has to be some of the most disgusting shit I have ever had, really it is difficult to drink without having the sensation of puking.

While the dishes are being served, the wedding ceremony takes place, usually performed by some kind of host. One convenient aspect of the wedding is that the ceremony aspect is short and sweet and usually takes place while everyone is seated at the dinner tables, sometimes having already started eating. There are some Westernized traditions, such as passing the rings to each other, ‘kissing the bride’ and finally voila, ceremony is over, every start (or continue) eating. Once the ceremony finishes, the bride and groom have the custom of visiting each table and meeting with the guests. They typically will personally toast each table with some of that white wine. (Since the weddings usually have over a 100 guests with 10 or more tables, you can imagine 10 shots of this white wine, potentially fatal alcohol would make them wasted by the time the wedding is finished. So they will usually have the best man and best woman to actually drink and the bride and groom will have some kind of ‘fake’ alcohol which is really Sprite or some alternative. ) Once the dinner is finished, there is typically a wedding cake but the idea of everyone getting a piece is not feasible since there are so many people so they will serve a piece or two to each table and everyone shares and picks (with chopsticks) at the individual slice.

One of the things that was striking about this wedding was that it was bigger than the first one I attended. When I first entered the banquet room, I was suddenly the only foreigner in a room of a couple hundred people, being looked at by a good majority of them. I felt really strange because in another part of this place, the bride and groom were standing and I felt like the showcase of the event, not the bride and groom. It is a strange feeling to walk into a room where everyone is looking at you with this facial expression saying something like ‘Who is that guy and why is he here?’ I am not necessarily afraid of people looking at me but this was definitely on a scale that I am not very used to.

By the time the wedding was finally over, we were pretty exhausted and went home. I actually had a good time and it was nice to eat such a great meal.  I thought I was going to  be disappointed considering we spent so much money for the groom’s gift, but by the time the wedding was finished, I was happy I went.

Next wedding, to be continued….