Currently, I am sitting in a cafe with a classmate, a friend from Ireland, and some Chinese listening to what sounds like Enya and drinking hot chocolate as we stare out the window watch it snow! Yeah, we woke up to snow the morning after Halloween.
Yesterday, I found myself on public transportation for over five hours, singing at a Chinese wedding, and going to a Halloween party in a huge art gallery. Now I have got to “Tarantino” this.
Two weekends ago we did a rural home stay in a village about an hour north of Beijing. We went to this really small village of about 200 people with approximately 80% of them Catholics; they don’t follow the pope, but they do have masses and celebrate Catholic holidays. I even walked by a mass, and their prayers sounded very interesting because all of the words in Chinese are monosyllabic so it sounded a lot more rhythmic. Although we were staying in a rural village, we lived in kind of a bed and breakfast run by the family. It was the nicest living situation by far in the village and the 2 story building with a rooftop patio was sort of out of place next to the small brick farm houses that surrounded it. The family had made their money in Beijing and had moved back to their hometown. Our teachers tried to get us accommodations with rural families in their houses but the local government would not allow that, questioning why we didn’t want to live in the best place - they didn’t want to loose face by letting us stay in the poor houses.
While we were there, we all conducted minor research projects. I did mine on love, emphasizing marriage. I went around the village “attempting” to interview people about their pre and post marriage lives and marriage ceremony. “Attempted” because being a foreigner with a translator asking to talk to rural villagers about their marriages is obviously intimidating. It was also an extremely short amount of time to conduct research of that type. (The last research I conducted lasted a semester through an internship I had at a juvenile detention center. I was able to build up relationships and was able to observe for months and then near the end, I finally conducted interviews.) With this project, there wasn’t really anytime to develop relationship, I just walked up to people and asked if I could talk with them a little. Attempting to build up a relationship, I did go into the fields and help harvest persimmons with a local family.
During one of my interviews, a woman and her daughter began listening and when the word “marriage” came up in Chinese, the women quickly spurted off some Chinese to me; through my facial expression it must have been pretty obvious that I could not comprehend what she had said to me because her daughter then spoke into me in English. She said that there was a wedding her family was attending next weekend and I was invited. My response was “Of course! What is your name?” While my translator and the mother talked about details in Chinese, I asked the girl a little about what I was getting myself into and who she was and to confirm that the marriage was for someone else and not me. The girl’s grandparents were from the village and she was visiting. She showed me their house and their little German Shepherd puppy. It was a pretty cool experience. We made plans for my visit next weekend.
Also, while staying in the village, we learned how to play mahjong, which has the same concept as gin (maybe a new game for the Cabin?).We also climbed a cool mountain that overlooks the village and the surrounding areas.
During this next week of class, I studied a lot! In Traditional Chinese Medicine we learned Tuina, which is massage techniques, learned acupuncture and “cupping” techniques. I think I’m going to bring some cupping materials home, I really like it. Also during the week, I received a text message from Wang Yang, the girl who I’d met in the village; she said that there would be no better way to show my blessings to the bride and groom than to sing a song. Done, when else would I have such an experience?
Saturday I woke up before the sun in order to catch a bus to catch another bus that will take me to a city outside Beijing for the wedding. After arriving and meeting up with Wang Yang and her family, we traveled to where the auto procession would begin. In China, it is customary to have the wedding procession travel in 8 either black or red sports cars. There are companies here that specifically buy red and black European sports cars for the sole purpose of weddings. The processions always consist of 8 cars because the word for 8 is “ba” in Chinese and it sounds similar to the word for prosper.
The procession headed first to the bride’s home where we packed into a stairwell with a professional cameraman recording the events. The groom had to knock on the door and basically barter with the bride’s parents on how much he was going to give them for their daughter. It was a very humorous exchange with the parents asking for ridiculous sums and the funny banter going back and forth between the two sides. This lasted for probably 5 minutes. Then when the price was finally agreed upon, the groom and everyone else was let into the house where he then saw his bride. They chatted and laughed and then another common marriage practice took place. Before the bride could leave, the groom had to find her shoes which were hidden. After being fed candy by the bride’s mother, we all followed the groom carrying the bride down the stairs. This is another traditional custom which symbolizes the woman not having to work now that she has a husband. Once the bride and the groom are joined together in the procession of cars, they then drove around the city for a couple hours.
It's hard not to compare the wedding to an Asian game show. There were huge speakers blasting random American pop covers, an MC dressed in a colorful suit, and a bubble machine. The MC joked around with the crowd and played little practical jokes on the bride and groom. At one time in the ceremony, the groom had to run down the aisle and profess his love to his wife, and then had to do it a second time because the first was not deemed good enough. Everyone loved it. The mood was festive and happy. Really quickly, the bride and groom were handed their marriage certificates and exchanged the ring and kissed. Then the microphone was handed to me. I choose an oldie but goodie to set the mood and sang “Aint No Mountain High Enough”. Let’s just say I got asked to sing another song. Before I had the chance, the bride and groom returned from changing into their traditional wedding costumes (before the groom was in a suit and the bride in a white dress) now wearing red outfits with traditional head pieces. This ceremony consisted of little speeches from the parents and the couple bowing to the parents and thanking them and then the drinking of Bijou (the hard alcohol here), the first of many toasts. During the course of our meal, where the tables basically became of pyramid of food stacked on top of itself, there was an incredible amount of Bijou being consumed.
The experience of the wedding was awesome - I loved it and it was such a happy time. Then I had a pretty much the opposite experience searching for the correct bus to take me back to the city, then travel over 3 hours on what should have been a 40 minute trip. I had a lot of time to think about my Halloween costume, which I totally did not take advantage of and once I arrived back at campus, realized that all my friends had sweet costumes and I was desperately looking for one. Then Acadia gave me the idea to be a “nudist of strike”. Problem solved. Last night was filled with dancing, awesome costumes and conversations with really cool people. I met two groups of people from Hong Kong who I will hopefully meet up with when I go there.
Life is awesome. Much Love
