Xi'an Adventures and Goodbyes

A few weeks ago, I went rafting with a few friends outside of the city. We met at a random intersection in Xi’an, where a random 面包车 bus picked us up and whisked us out of the city. The ride was beautiful, and about 2 hours. Then we arrived in a small town, where we were told to wait a few hours until the rafting bus came for us at 2pm (It was 10am at the time we arrived). We got a few beers, and went down to the river, where we found some nice rocks to lay on and a shallow part of the river to swim in. It was so nice being outside the city, and relaxing in the sun. For lunch, we had a great home cooked guest house meal. I’ve always found the best food in China is homemade, and food in the countryside is generally fresher. At 2pm, we hopped on another bus, which took us up the mountain to the beginning of the rafting. We had all decided that riding on single rafts would be more fun, but they forced us into pairs. Unfortunately, I was the odd one out so I had to raft all by myself down the river. L Everyone else fell out of their rafts though so I guess I got a good deal, although I always think falling out is more exciting...Then we returned to Xi’an at the end of the day.

One of my good friends was leaving Xi’an this week, and invited a few friends out for a goodbye dinner with some of his Chinese friends. We arrived at the restaurant where his friends had reserved a table to find a full on Chinese banquet awaiting us. There were about 10 middle-aged Chinese men and women crowded around a big round table with a lazy susan, already packed with cold dishes and beer. The Chinese banquet is a very unique cultural phenomenon. These banquets are generally full of forced drinking in the form of toasts, which would be rude to refuse, and a terrifyingly large amount of food that people pressure you to eat. (Side Note: This year, China’s new president, Xi Jinping, announced a new policy designed to reduce waste and corruption. This policy is called “4 dishes and a soup”, which is meant to represent the optimal amount of food at a banquet. This has led to many fancy restaurants and high-end liquor producers to go out of business so far this year. It’s really working!) So I sat next to Jeremy at this dinner, and became a translator for most of the meal. There were a few Chinese people that could speak English and only I could speak Chinese amongst the foreigners so we all translated back and forth for the rest of the party. It was quite fun! The Chinese women at the table loved my friend Jess and I for our white skin (yes, actually):

The ladies made us chug a lot of beer, and they could really throw it back! They also decided that my friend Jeremy looks like a young Bill Clinton, and since they thought I was with Jeremy (and they knew I’m doing women’s political participation work), they decided that I must be young Hillary. For the rest of the night, we became “Clinton” and “Hillary”, and they all wanted individual pictures with us because we were now celebrities. Here are some pictures to compare us to:

Other gems from the night: They told my Spanish friend that he must be good at sex because he has a beard. I was told by the host that I was the “superior model of the white race.” And another Chinese guest decided that he looked like Deng Xiaoping, one of China’s greatest leaders in the modern era, so we called him Deng all night. I love Chinese banquets (well most of the time...).

A few weeks ago I attended a Chinese wedding of one of my professor’s former graduate students. I had only met her once, and barely know her name, but that didn’t matter. Having a foreigner at your wedding showed that you were “international” and gives you a lot of “face.” So of course upon arrival at the wedding, I was attacked by paparazzi (aka Chinese guests):

The bride, groom, and my classmates

Parents of the bride

Parents of the groom

Next we headed to the gift table where we gave our 红包 hongbao (a small red envelope w/ money in it) of 100rmb to the bride and groom’s family, and signed our name on their equivalent of a “guestbook,” which was a long piece of red paper where people signed their name in “calligraphy” style. Then we were escorted to a row of tables, although the seating wasn’t assigned. I came with my two of my professor’s current graduate students, and my professor and her husband. The five of us sat together at a table with five guys who went to high school with the groom.

The banquet hall

Apparently this was one of the biggest and most fancy weddings my professor had ever been to, and she’s been to a lot of weddings. The wedding was in the auditorium of a large hotel. Pictures were taken in the lobby, and then guests were seated at tables in the auditorium, which had four or five tiers in front of a large stage. The room had enough tables for probably 400 guests. The wedding invitation said to arrive at 11am, and the ceremony began at noon. While waiting to start the ceremony, two large screens on the stage showed a slideshow of cheesy Chinese wedding photos of the couple posed in front of fake trees, rivers, etc. They also blasted corny 1980s and 1990s American love songs (think Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey...).

Finally at noon, the MC came on over the loud speaker and announced the start of the wedding. Several Chinese girls dressed in flowy white, short dresses came on stage and danced not very good ballet to a Chinese love song. Then the lits dimmed, and the groom walked down the long red aisle, and stopped under a small floral arch mid-way down the tiers of tables.

Then attention turned back to the stage as the bride descended with her parents on a pedestal from the ceiling, accompanied by more love songs, red petals, and smoke. She had an elaborate hairdo, and wore a white wedding dress, complete with sequins.

Falling Rose Petals

Then the bride walked to the front of the stage with her parents and waited for the groom to approach the stage. Then the parents stepped aside and the bride and groom held hands in the middle of the stage. They had pre-recorded their vows so they just stood there while those played. I think they were both crying, but it was hard to tell. Then they put rings on each other’s fingers, and kissed.

There was no one officiating the wedding, and no religious influence whatsoever. Then both set of parents were brought back up on stage. The bride and groom presented the parents with cups of tea, and there was a lot of bowing and thanking. The “honoring the parents” part took more time than any of the other parents of the wedding. One of the groom’s professors came on stage at one point and made a speech about how happy the couple would be together. After about 45 minutes of ceremony, the bride and groom walked back down the aisle together as rose petals fell from the sky and guests fired “party poppers” of paper red hearts at them.

Next began the eating, a ritual that holds great importance in China. At each place setting was a bag of goodies, called “wedding candy,” meant as a party favor. I found them not so good. There were bottles of expensive 白酒 baijiu (Chinese “white liquor”, basically grain alcohol) on the table that we could drink if we wanted, but luckily no one forced that on us. Instead we drank coke and sprite, very classy. Most of the food was typical Xi’an style banquet food, and fortunately there was not a huge excess, although my professor still insisted I bag all the leftovers and take them home. The bride and groom reemerged a few minutes after the eating began. The bride had changed into a red 旗袍 qipao (the traditional fitted Chinese—actually Manchurian, but imposed on the Chinese during the Qing Dynasty—dress), which is traditional for Chinese weddings. They went around to each table and toasted the guests with baijiu. During the luncheon, there were several performances on stage of Tang Dynasty style dancing and fighting. It was all Tang Dynasty themed because the hotel was called “New Tang Dynasty.” I found the dancing vey bizarre.

After about one hour of eating, people starting clearing out and the wedding was over! It was relatively short, I felt, compared to American weddings. There was no dancing or lingering about, no cutting of the cake, and no big bride and groom send off. We just bagged up the leftovers, and went home. The whole thing seemed a bit anti-climatic at the end, but certainly had plenty of pomp and ceremony throughout. The total lack of religious influence was very odd to me, despite having attended many weddings in the US by not particularly religious couples. There also was no separation of the wedding and the reception. Pictures were taken weeks before the wedding to send out with the invitations, and to make the slideshow so the groom had seen the bride in her dress before the actual wedding day. And even on the day of the wedding, they were posing for pictures with the guests before the wedding even started. So that was my first Chinese wedding! And hopefully not my last!

This past week in Xi'an, I came across an event designed to celebrate the NBA Finals currently happening in the US:

And in other news, I have officially moved back to Beijing! The major reason why I moved back is because all but one of my NGO case studies are based in Beijing so I can work much more efficiently and smoothly living here. In China, a lot of things are not planned in advance. For example, on Monday my professor in Xi'an told me that a US professor was coming to speak later that day at the university about the one child policy and its effect on gender bias. Since they only told me that morning, I already had commitments for the afternoon and couldn't go. Now that I'm back in Beijing, I'm hoping I will be able to attend a lot more events and meetings with my NGOs that I'm studying. Additionally, Beijing is the center of the China's budding civil society movement, and all women's rights movements and activities. I am hoping that I can get better connected to both the NGO and the women's rights scene in China by living in Beijing. This will afford me more opportunities and connections for my research. Another reason that motivated my move was the stresses of living in a "2nd tier" city with only a limited number of friends. While I made some great friends in Xi'an, I didn't have my usual crew to call upon when I wanted to do something fun or when I needed help with something. Between living alone and working alone without an office or colleagues, I could theoretically go days without any real social interaction. For anyone that knows me well, you know that I can't handle going even a few hours without some kind of social interaction. Basically it was getting really lonely in Xi'an, and it was interfering with my work. So now I'm back in Beijing, and looking for an apartment. I will be spending the remaining four plus months of my grant in Beijing.

In preparation for leaving, I tried to see all my friends so that we could say goodbye, although I'll be back several times throughout the rest of my Fulbright grant. My first "going away party" was held by the same Chinese man, Zhang, who I talked about above. After getting miserably lost and very sweaty, Giulia and I arrived an hour late to the banquet. Then Zhang preceded to make uncomfortable and racist comments throughout the night. He clearly didn't realize that the things he was saying are totally unacceptable amongst us foreigners. I tried not to be offended, but it can be hard to brush it off sometimes. I also didn't want to drink a lot so it was hard fending off the Chinese peer pressure to drink.

The next day, I had dinner with my Jiaotong University professor and her two graduate students that have helped me out throughout the semester. They are all very sweet, and I will definitely keep up my relationship with them!

Sasa and I- she clearly wasn't into this photo shoot

Yang Ting (my favorite) and I 

Yang Ting- the cutest Chinese girl EVER

Yang Ting and I, again

Yang Ting, My professor (so cute and fashionable), Sasa, and I 

Then on Wednesday night, I had a final goodbye with the Fulbright Xi'an girls- I'm going to miss them!

Stay tuned for updates on my new crib in Beijing- that is, once I find it...