Now, you may be asking yourselves, "when did you give up religion and start worshiping a highly communist, Chinese deity?" "Stephanie aren't you Catholic?" "Andrea, I thought you
were Presbyterian..." (Cathy Lee's part of the story comes later)
Here now comes another story of drunkenness as supplied by the staff of Chengde Medical College.
Andrea and I were invited to dinner (about an hour before it was to take place) with the English Department. Apparently it is office Christmas party season/ aka New Years Party time. Again, we were the super duper guests of honor and were not allowed to sit with the cool, fun, young staff members, but were placed with the crusty, old, heavy baijou drinkers that don't speak English as much. This restaurant was pretty good, especially when compared to the dinner we had the night before where the president of the school insisted that we eat squares of fat because "they're good for your health". (it wasn't that bad, I just had to pretend I wasn't eating lard... it was kind of sweet...) The shots of baijou were passed around and we drank quite a bit before the meal started dying down. Don't worry, we taught everyone to chant "chug, chug, chug!" as they were downing pijou(beer). It was at this time, however, that the president of the school walked in. We had no idea he would be coming and because we had had dinner with his office staff the night before we didn't expect him at all. Regardless, he ordered us to drink more beer and then asked us if we like beef. Uh... sure, we like beef. "Yes, we have heard that Americans like beef." yeah... ok... We were then told that President Wang had ordered not one, but two more beef dishes for us, and only us, to enjoy. The night before President Wang was promising us hospitality for the Beijing Olympics, but last night we were promised big, lush apartments and a higher salary if we became permanent members of the Medical College's staff. We told him we'd think about it, but really all we thought about was that if we stayed we'd be going to a lot more dinners like the very one we were enjoying at the moment.
At this point we were reintroduced to the lovely people sitting around the table with us. Ms. Yee pointed out Mr. Wang, the VP of the English Dept, Mr. Wang, the Secretary of the English Dept, Mr. Lee, an English teacher... and of course President Wang. So the table set up was; Yee, Wang, Wang, Lee, Wang, Klaassen, Cosgrove. Riiiight... this is also about the time that Ms. Yee needs to tell President Wang my name again. He can not remember it because it is so long. So I tell him I need a Chinese name. What does Stephanie mean? According to my "Baby Name Book" it means "crowned one, noble and intelligent". He came up with Gui Hua (gway hwah) which is "noble flower". "It is the sweet smelling, princess flower", he says. Andrea kindly chimes in that I don't always smell so good, to which I sniff my armpit and grimace, thus causing uproarious laughter from all the Wangs. I also admit that my parents sometimes call me a princess... not so much out of love and adoration, but out of irritation at my ability to take 25 minute showers and need at least 1 hour to get ready for anything. Ho ho ho... and President Wang had to leave.
Enter stage left: Mr. Zhong, everyone's favorite and incredibly INTENSE English teacher. I was once invited to an "after school lecture" given by Mr. Zhong where I sat as the horrified honored guest, while he bullied the students into believing that if they didn't ALL know English that China, as a country, will never succeed. He's intensely communist.
So there we were; drunkity drunk drunk drunk and only mildly prepared for what Mr. Zhong might throw out there. All I remember is that at one point I made the ridiculous claim that, "communism and capitalism are really the same because they both have the same goals at heart! In fact! All religions are also the same..." There was a moment of quiet contemplation before my asinine comments were met with cheers of agreement. Andrea sat silently, hiding her face in her beer hoping that after opening up the topics of politics and religion that I wouldn't go for Tibet or Taiwan next. It was after I opened up that fat can of worms that Mr. Zhong proclaimed that he is god. Everyone is god! Andrea is god! I am god too!
KTV was next on the agenda. I came out of the bathroom to find Andrea looking like hell, so she went home, but I was led by the arm into a car and driven to... somewhere. I walked into the karaoke room to find about 30 Chinese people that I've never met before. I pointed to a random song I knew because they asked me to chose something. I found then that it was actually my turn next... so I sang "Like a Virgin" by myself, to 30 Chinamen dancing and egging me on. A nice older gentleman asked me to dance. I complied. I was driven home. I ate reheated spiral noodles and marinara sauce with my bare hands as Cathy Lee wondered how Andrea and I got to be in such a mess by only 10 o'clock at night.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... Cathy Lee had quite an interesting night of her own. After returning some wonderful literature written by horrible English writers at her school, Cathy Lee jumped on a bus and prayed that she would make it in time to sneak into my house before we went to dinner... unfortunately she was too late and ended up having to think of different ways to pass the time until we would come back home again. After thinking for around 30 seconds, because is was REALLY cold outside, she figured that the US embassy in Chengde (aka KFC) sounded like a good place to waste an hour or two. With "The Bridges of Madison County" in hand she went to KFC and enjoyed some extra crispy chicken and a diet coke while reading about the adventures of Francesscaand Robert Kincaid. At about 7:30 she decided to try getting back into my house again, but to no avail. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily depending on how you look at it) my upstairs neighbor found her and decided that the cold stairway was no place to wait for a friend. So Cathy Lee was taken hostage by the upstairs apartment lady. While she was there for the next three hours, she enjoyed such new foreign delicacies as milk in a bag and the nasty sour grape juice they call wine. Then, for the second time here in China, (Cathy Lee's a lucky one) she witnessed a native dropping trou. Upstairs lady felt it was time to strip down to her long underwear, you know, since they were becoming such good friends and all, she felt comfortable enough, or rather, uncomfortably hot enough to depants. Upstairs lady then asked Cathy Lee to come back the next day for breakfast at 8 pm which confused my homeless friend a little until they reached an agreement for dinner at 6 pm with the help of the woman's English speaking son. Sadly, around 10 pm Cathy Lee finally told the woman that she was going home and thanked her very much for her hospitality. She decided to try my apartment one more time before finally giving up and going back to her own apartment (aka the dungeon of doom). This is where the story comes back, full circle to me eating pasta with my hands... Good night.
Successfully surviving two consecutive nights of office dinner parties, we now look forward to the New Years party taking place tonight. Greek Helen's students have invited us to a party and we're fairly confident that the 17-year-olds won't be toasting our good health with baijou... though I wouldn't put it past them...
Here's a picture of my last foreign gathering in Chengde. After I came back from Tibet I was the only one left... so...
