china likes to rock the party

during the past week, i have been to a few parties, which have been most interesting. the first was the birthday party for the young girl whom i am teaching, her 13th. all of her classmates from her school were in attendance, singing karaoke, playing games and generally having fun. there are a few western fast food joints in shunde, pizza hut, kfc and mcdonalds, all of which comprised the menu for the affair. pizza hut in china is an especially interesting place as it is a full-service sit-down restaurant where people go for a fancy night out. it is relatively very expensive and is almost treated as a gourmet establishment. similarly, the upper middle class people of this city are also under the impression that the fords that they drive are quite luxurious.

the people that i work for are very wealthy and have a brand new seven series bmw, but all of the things that make a luxury car a luxury car are in english, so they are of no use to them. it is awfully contradictory for a people obsessed with industriousness and maintaining economies of scale to have things that are completely useless. i guess that this family is rich enough to not care about being able to read the gps screen in their new bmw.

the birthday party was quite entertaining and i was very popular as all of the kids got a chance to practice the english that they had been learning at school. one little guy was especially funny. he asked me if i liked living in china. i told him that it was really cool. he had a very confused look on his face and asked me why. when i responded with the standard, diplomatic answer of, “the people are all really nice,” he looked even more confused and said, “what people have you been talking to?” i found this to be extremely funny and came clean with him, that it wasn’t an ideal place to be. he appreciated my honesty.

a few days after the birthday party, i was invited to attend a housewarming party for one of the extended family members of the people for whom i am working. when people here move into a new house, they throw huge blowouts and this one was in a giant room of a posh restaurant. before things got underway, everyone was chatting, smoking and not letting a single toothpick go unused, per usual. all of the guests sat down and all of a sudden the lights turned off and disco balls began shining, smoke machines were going full-blast, lasers projected designs of happy faces and stars on the walls and of all things, the theme song from the magnificent seven began to play. as quickly as it started, it ended, and no one in the room seemed to be impressed by this. it seemed as if this is something that happens at every gathering. maybe it is.

a man jumped onto a stage at one end of the room and began yelling into the microphone. chinese people love microphones. they have some sort of obsession with them that, like most things here, i can’t quite wrap my head around. everyone applauded at intervals of the man’s speech and then the food was served. it is easy for me to eat at these kinds of places because the head of whatever animal is being presented is always on the plate. i had never eaten piglet before. well, maybe i had. i guess i never would have known it without the head of the animal being displayed.

they do a great job with doing different things with shrimp here and all of the shrimp dishes are always fantastic. the shrimp that were served at this meal were served whole in their shells as usual, but this time, everyone was eating the entire thing, head and all. i tried this but found that it was not worth the trouble that came after eating one whole, which included spending ten minutes picking the shell and legs out of your teeth. this could be part of the appeal, as these people love picking their teeth almost as much as they love screaming into microphones. i decided it was more effective to peel the shell off of the damn thing and just eat the meat. it certainly tasted better.

the night after the party, i walked around the corner to the market near my apartment to get some drinks and a snack. while i was on my way, i noticed a very large and very dead rat in the street. it was the first one i had seen in over a month here, which is why it attracted my attention. dead rats and lizards and things of that nature are extremely common in cambodia and people there are way more hungry than they are here. i bought a bottle of iced tea and a bag of cookies and headed home. as i turned the corner, i noticed that a person was holding the rat that had been in the street and that person then turned and took the rat back into his house. if my cantonese were any better,

i would have taken the time to explain to the man that i had just seen something on the news about the prices for pig products dropping below the price of corn, forcing the government to put a floor in place – surely he could spring for at least a trotter. maybe he knows something the who doesn’t know, that you can get swine flu from eating pork. or maybe its just that dead rats are in season this time of year.

now i know why i haven’t seen many dead rats around town.