Happy Mao Day!

Trip Start Aug 24, 2007

Trip End Jul 04, 2008

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Flag of China Zhengzhou, China
Friday, October 5, 2007

    China's Golden Week is upon me, leaving me free to do whatever I please for the next week and also leaving me completely alone on a desolate campus. HeDa's campus, which is normally teeming with students on their bikes, badminton players and the general presence of people, has completely emptied out since Friday as people make their way home. Even the long line of bung-bung drivers stationed outside the South Gate have dwindled down to a few patient souls waiting for anyone to exit the gate desperate for a ride somewhere in town.
    My Golden Week, or National Week as it is also called, started out on a completely ridiculous note. We got paid on Friday and since it was my first pay day of real life, Erin and I decided to celebrate. By rolling around in our money. We walked into Jackie's office not really knowing what to expect except that we would be paid in cash. After signing our names on a tiny slip of paper, Jackie counted out 3000 kuai for each of us. I have never been so happy to see Mao's face. And the fact that the money is big and pink and has Mao's face on it doesn't help us take being paid seriously. So we promptly came back to my apartment and started to throw our money around while listening to "Money (that' what I want)" by the Flying Lizards.
    Then, several hours after our money rolling experience, Erin, Max and I piled into a van with Jackie and the Japanese teacher wearing our finest clothes. We were headed to Zhengzhou to the Communist Party's National Day Reception.
    National Day is October First and it commemorates Chairman Mao's speech on Tiananmen Square that established "New China," or The People's Republic. Since Mr.

money...

Ma is currently attending Party School in Zhengzhou, he asked us if we wanted to attend the celebration. We said sure without realizing what we were getting into, or rather, the prestige of the event. Before we left and while Jackie was doling out our cash piles to us he asked Erin if she knew anyone in provincial government.
    "No, I don't," she said.
    "Are you sure? You can't think of anyone you would know who is in government?" Jackie probed, not believing her response.
    "No, not at all! I just know Mr. Ma," she replied, baffled.
    "Then you are very lucky! They want you to sit at the big table!" Jackie told her.
    Looking at each other, Erin and I were very confused.
    "They called me up today and said, 'We want Erin Potter to sit at the main table.' And I said, 'Erin Potter? Are you sure?' 'She is American and an English teacher, yes?' they asked me. 'Uh, yes, yes she is.' 'Good. She is sitting at the main table and that is all you need to know.' That is what they told me and then they hung up," Jackie told us.
    So when we pulled up to the hotel, we weren't really sure what to expect. We were all a little upset because Jackie had to drive us and therefore had to get dressed up, but wasn't invited to the banquet. He wasn't even given a meal card so he could get something to eat while he waited for us in the lobby. As we piled out of the van and walked towards the hotel, we saw Mr.

is what i want.

Ma, who automatically gave Jackie his bags to carry and errands to run before Mr. Ma whisked the four of us into the hotel lobby and into the mirrored elevator. As the elevator climbed through the floors of the hotel, the four of us clutched to our big red invitations with their gold lettering, not really sure if we really need them. We walked through your generic hotel hallways, following Mr. Ma as he showed us to the banquet hall. When we got to the entranceway, we all started to worry about what we got ourselves into.
    The banquet room featured an orchestra to right of the room that was tuning up their instruments. Behind them and covering the whole wall was a giant red backdrop in English and in Chinese, proclaiming the 58th anniversary of the PRC's founding. The smell of baijou was already permeating through everything in the room as the wait staff poured everyone's shot glasses full of that nasty liquor. Flowers adorned the tops of the tables as chairs draped in red and gold fabric nestled up around them. And then there was the giant main table that was clearly much fancier than the rest of the tables that were corralled together in the middle of the room.
    "Oh God, I am not sitting there!" breathed Erin.
    Mr. Ma showed Max and I to our table, where my spot was marked with a place setting for "Mrs. Emily Miller," and then he showed Erin to hers. Her table set up was equipped with fancy silverware and a place setting with "Mrs.

high five to banquets!

Erin Potter" branded on gold fabric.
    "Raise your hand if this is the fanciest and nicest thing you have ever attended and probably ever will attend," I asked.
    All three of us raised our hands.
    We quickly left the fancy room as we all felt awkward and out of place. We found Jackie and stood in a nook of the hallway, drinking beer and avoiding the formalities of schmoozing and having small talk with big time officials. When we realized that we had to go back in for the banquet to start, we begrudginly left Jackie and filed back into the banquet room. The room was now crowded with army officials, Chinese men with expensive looking suits and a few other waiguoren plopped throughout the room. Three kids from Beloit have never been more out of place.
    The room was now crowded with army officials, Chinese men with expensive looking suits and a few other waiguoren plopped throughout the room. The three of us assumed our positions at our respective tables, and I was thankful that Max and I were both placed at table number 2. I sat next to Mr. Ma, my boss and a man who has been relatively absent from my life as he has been at party school for the majority of my time in China. We passed a few awkward moments as he tried to bumble through small talk in English before he decided to pass me onto the University's Party Secretary General. The Sec. Gen. was getting ready to have me down a shot of baijou when luckily, the governor of Henan assumed the stage and gave his National Day Address. He mainly talked about how great Henan was, the progress the province has made and how it is becoming economically strong. We toasted to the bumper crops and then we toasted to all the ethnic minorities, which I thought was a little strange, but went along with it anyway. Then he introduced everyone at the main table like himself, the vice governor, the party's secretary general for Henan province, Henan's army commander, and Erin Potter. Erin wasn't the only waiguoren seated at the table but she was definitely one of few and her presence was captured by the handful of news crews there to report on the banquet. After Erin's spot in the Chinese spot light, the governor toasted all of us. The banquet had begun.
    Chinese banquets are really interesting beasts to tackle. First of all, let me say that you don't eat at Chinese banquets. The food is a mere formality that is there just so they can call it a "banquet" and not a "three-hour alcohol binge fest." The former has a much nicer sounding name. So while the fancy food remained untouched on the table's lazy susan, Max and I were carted around by Mr.

happy mao day.

Ma as we stomached shot after shot of baijou. Shortly after I drank with Henan's Army commander I decided that it would be best for the reputation of the school if I ate something. So, as I clumsily tried to tackle the slippery Chinese food with my quickly evaporating chop stick skills, Mr. Ma sat down next to me.
    "So Emily, do you like the Chinese way?" He asked.
    "The Chinese way?" I asked, not really sure what he was asking me.
    "Yes, where you go around and take drinks with everyone to get to know them," he replied.
    "Oh yes, I like it very much. Except I think it will be more useful for me once I know more Chinese," I said.
    "Oh, I see," he said as he took a bite of noodles. "Do these noodles taste like alcohol to you? I think they taste like baijou!"
    And then I realized that Mr. Ma was completely smashed.
    And then all of a sudden, in the Chinese way, the banquet was over. The three of us were left alone in an empty banquet room with all of the untouched food and Mr. Ma and the Japanese teacher.
    "You're still eating?!" Mr. Ma asked incredulously as he noticed that the three of us were seated together eating the food.
    "There's still so much food left and we didn't really eat anything!" said Max.
The food had been left so untouched that it didn't look like anyone had eaten anything at our table. So the three of us were left alone, drunk and eating, in a fancy reception room while bad elevator muzak was playing over head. I thought to myself, and not for the first time since I've been to China, that I felt like that drunken relative who's left alone to sing bad karaoke at the end of weddings after everyone has gone home.
    "Did we really just drink with the governor of Henan?" asked Max.
    "Yes, yes we did," Erin and I told him.
    "Our lives are so ridiculous," he said, laughing and shaking his head as he tried to grab food with his chopsticks.
    I couldn't agree more.