Chinese Wedding...
I just got back from a wedding reception for one of the English teachers at the school. The wedding ceremony was yesterday, and early this morning (around 3:00AM), the groom picked up the bride from her house. Needless to say they were a bit tired around lunch time when our busload of teachers stopped by the reception which had been going for a couple of hours already.
We got there at 12:30, just in time for the most important part -the food and the toasts. There were about 10 people at each table and countless tables. The food started with a few small dishes, pop, baijiu, and sunflower seeds. The dishes slowly got bigger and more elaborate until the mutton, whole chicken, whole fish, and huge hunk of ham for each table arrived. The food was really good, and the piece of small intestine that ended up on my plate wasn't too bad either (a piece of meat from a Sichuan dish that I didn't realise was intestine until I put it on my plate).
Of course there were many toasts too. The emcee went around to all the tables singing and toasting into a microphone. When he came to our table, he zoomed in on me saying "Hello! Welcome!" and putting the microphone in my face. When the couple came around I gave the bride a hug (Canadian tradition). The other people at the table said I must be brave for hugging a policeman's wife (though I think he had enough toasts of baijiu to notice too much). We made it back to school for the 2:00 afternoon classes.