As time passes we get busier and busier.
Last week I heard about a singing contest through a student, Candy, but it was at another university near us. I’d heard her before and she has a beautiful voice and we thought it would be fun to go see her. We asked for directions and it seemed easy enough. Go out the north gate of our school and walk through the beautiful park just to the left of the students’ cafeteria. At the other end of the park we would see another university and the contest would be held there.
As we came to the end of the park we saw a school with a stage set up outdoors including concert lighting, speakers and fairly elaborate backdrops. Many people were congregating and we, Pauline from Canada, Cindy and I walked up to place. About one hundred students were standing around and there was a section of seats that were blocked off. We asked if anyone spoke English and a young girl responded in ‘Chinglish’ -- meaning she spoke a little broken English but didn’t speak well enough to converse or understand too much of what we were saying.
At first she told us that the section was not for general seating and we could not sit there. Then she quickly returned and told us we could sit there. Cindy suggested that we should sit in the back row in case we wanted to make an inconspicuous getaway. We sat down and waited. After a moment the same girl came back, very embarrassed, and asked us to please sit in the front row. There are no easy and quick getaways when you sit in the front row.
Well, you could say she asked us to move to the front row -- and the judges table -- but it really wasn’t a question, it was more like, “We are putting you in a place of honor and you are to move to the front row so we can honor you.” As good foreigners we moved and grabbed the last three seats in the row just in case we still needed to make a quick escape. Well, wouldn’t you know it, after another moment some other Chinese people came to us and again asked us to move to the center of the judges table, which of course we did. Then they pinned corsages upon us and we thought, are we judges at this event? How could that be?
The judges table was very long, seating at least 20 people, and covered with black velvet with some simple decorations and a bottle of water in front of each seat. Soon the chairs around us began to fill. When we turned around there must have been over 50 people sitting and another 100 standing behind the bank of chairs. Now we knew we were in trouble, big trouble. There was no escaping!
Two young college students behind us began to talk to us in “Chinglish” about where we were from, how long we had been in China and other information that in the end was given to the President of the University who was sitting two seats away from Pauline (we found this out later of course.) Well, it suddenly dawned on us that we were the biggest thing to happen at this school and event since sliced bread.
A young student in a tux (our host) and a young student in a beautiful Chinese red dress (our hostess) came out and addressed the crowd. Then a young man who sang a beautiful song in Chinese entertained us with the help of a state of the art sound system backing him up. We all thought we were in for a real treat that evening. The host and hostess came out often and the rest of the evening (6:00-8:00) was a series of skits, a dance or two, a little more singing, and a speech given by a student on the importance of reading. It wasn’t much later in the evening that student’s climbed up on the stage and different “judges” went up to the stage and gave out awards. Through the English speakers sitting near us, we found out these awards were being given out for various things such as best English reader, Chinese reader and best decorated dormitory. Where the hell were we?
During the entire ceremony the President of the University and others around us continued to request that we get up on stage to sing a song. Even the president asked Cindy to sing with him. Singing is a huge tradition in China and our students, who are too embarrassed to speak in class, will sing a song in front of strangers. Go figure! Anyway, Pauline, Cindy and I were not about to sing in front of these strangers, or anyone else for that matter, but they would not stop pestering us to sing. I even told them that if we sang the birds would all fly away and the small animals would die but that didn’t stop them. They really wanted us to sing. Finally Cindy said that I wouldn’t allow her to sing and that stopped the requests.
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, yes, you guessed it; we were at the wrong event at the wrong school. Remember, there are 14 universities in this educational zone and of course we walked into the wrong one.
In the end, the President got up on the stage and thanked the “invited” Western foreigners for attending. When the “production” ended we, and the beautiful corsages they pinned on us, hightailed it out of there. We asked around and finally headed down the correct road to the Broadcast University which was about ¾ of a mile away and not just on the other side of the park. As we were entering we met Candy, our singing friend, on her way out. We not only missed her singing but all but two of the other performers. That’s right, we caught the last two acts. Candy won’t be performing again until next month but tonight at our University is the finals in our music contest. We caught the preliminaries a couple of weeks ago and they were sensational so we’re looking forward to tonight’s affair which will be on our campus. We won’t get lost this time! Before the big singing contest we’re attending a B.B.Q. with some of my students.
It will be interesting to find out what they mean by a B.B.Q. We’ll report on that later….
On a personal note: Foreigners, especially Westerners, are held in high regard in China. Only God, Allah, Moses, Buddah or some other supreme power knows why. The West is doing a righteous job of messing up this world we live in. We start wars every few years, utilize way to much power for the amount of people we have, pollute too much, waste precious water, and do all of this with arrogance. For reasons not understood by us, they still hold us in high regard.
As we came to the end of the park we saw a school with a stage set up outdoors including concert lighting, speakers and fairly elaborate backdrops. Many people were congregating and we, Pauline from Canada, Cindy and I walked up to place. About one hundred students were standing around and there was a section of seats that were blocked off. We asked if anyone spoke English and a young girl responded in ‘Chinglish’ -- meaning she spoke a little broken English but didn’t speak well enough to converse or understand too much of what we were saying.
At first she told us that the section was not for general seating and we could not sit there. Then she quickly returned and told us we could sit there. Cindy suggested that we should sit in the back row in case we wanted to make an inconspicuous getaway. We sat down and waited. After a moment the same girl came back, very embarrassed, and asked us to please sit in the front row. There are no easy and quick getaways when you sit in the front row.
Well, you could say she asked us to move to the front row -- and the judges table -- but it really wasn’t a question, it was more like, “We are putting you in a place of honor and you are to move to the front row so we can honor you.” As good foreigners we moved and grabbed the last three seats in the row just in case we still needed to make a quick escape. Well, wouldn’t you know it, after another moment some other Chinese people came to us and again asked us to move to the center of the judges table, which of course we did. Then they pinned corsages upon us and we thought, are we judges at this event? How could that be?
The judges table was very long, seating at least 20 people, and covered with black velvet with some simple decorations and a bottle of water in front of each seat. Soon the chairs around us began to fill. When we turned around there must have been over 50 people sitting and another 100 standing behind the bank of chairs. Now we knew we were in trouble, big trouble. There was no escaping!
Two young college students behind us began to talk to us in “Chinglish” about where we were from, how long we had been in China and other information that in the end was given to the President of the University who was sitting two seats away from Pauline (we found this out later of course.) Well, it suddenly dawned on us that we were the biggest thing to happen at this school and event since sliced bread.
A young student in a tux (our host) and a young student in a beautiful Chinese red dress (our hostess) came out and addressed the crowd. Then a young man who sang a beautiful song in Chinese entertained us with the help of a state of the art sound system backing him up. We all thought we were in for a real treat that evening. The host and hostess came out often and the rest of the evening (6:00-8:00) was a series of skits, a dance or two, a little more singing, and a speech given by a student on the importance of reading. It wasn’t much later in the evening that student’s climbed up on the stage and different “judges” went up to the stage and gave out awards. Through the English speakers sitting near us, we found out these awards were being given out for various things such as best English reader, Chinese reader and best decorated dormitory. Where the hell were we?
During the entire ceremony the President of the University and others around us continued to request that we get up on stage to sing a song. Even the president asked Cindy to sing with him. Singing is a huge tradition in China and our students, who are too embarrassed to speak in class, will sing a song in front of strangers. Go figure! Anyway, Pauline, Cindy and I were not about to sing in front of these strangers, or anyone else for that matter, but they would not stop pestering us to sing. I even told them that if we sang the birds would all fly away and the small animals would die but that didn’t stop them. They really wanted us to sing. Finally Cindy said that I wouldn’t allow her to sing and that stopped the requests.
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, yes, you guessed it; we were at the wrong event at the wrong school. Remember, there are 14 universities in this educational zone and of course we walked into the wrong one.
In the end, the President got up on the stage and thanked the “invited” Western foreigners for attending. When the “production” ended we, and the beautiful corsages they pinned on us, hightailed it out of there. We asked around and finally headed down the correct road to the Broadcast University which was about ¾ of a mile away and not just on the other side of the park. As we were entering we met Candy, our singing friend, on her way out. We not only missed her singing but all but two of the other performers. That’s right, we caught the last two acts. Candy won’t be performing again until next month but tonight at our University is the finals in our music contest. We caught the preliminaries a couple of weeks ago and they were sensational so we’re looking forward to tonight’s affair which will be on our campus. We won’t get lost this time! Before the big singing contest we’re attending a B.B.Q. with some of my students.
It will be interesting to find out what they mean by a B.B.Q. We’ll report on that later….
On a personal note: Foreigners, especially Westerners, are held in high regard in China. Only God, Allah, Moses, Buddah or some other supreme power knows why. The West is doing a righteous job of messing up this world we live in. We start wars every few years, utilize way to much power for the amount of people we have, pollute too much, waste precious water, and do all of this with arrogance. For reasons not understood by us, they still hold us in high regard.
posted by royben | 1:27 PM
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