There are few things you pass up in life. One of them is attending a Chinese wedding.
For background information, a Chinese wedding is a huge party. There isn’t really a religious aspect because religion is not a prominent aspect of Chinese society.
I got invited to a Chinese wedding. I was told it was a “mafia wedding”, which if you’re aware of the obvious in any way at all, means that those getting married would be mafia hands. Given this briefing on the party to which I was just invited, there was no reason I was not going to this shindig.
One hang up, though: it was that it wasn’t really a wedding.
It was actually a 1st birthday party for the happy couple’s illegitimate child, only everyone knew that the party was also celebrating their recent and unceremonious marriage (FYI: having illegitimate children in China is about as socially cool as … well… having illegitimate children in the US, except you’re disowned by your family and friends, leaving your only option to move away from home).
So the party was 300 of your closest friends (including me? I didn’t really know the kid) to celebrate a birthday. The other odd part about the party is that it was 95% men, who looked like they could whoop your booty if you messed with them at all.
No joke, they all had one thing in common: scars on their faces or on their heads (you know how you can see scars when you’ve hit your head…even when the hair grows back).
I was slightly scared, but that was clouded over by the food I was trying to politely decline eating. It was filled with organs, fish, and weird colored chickens. I was lucky to be distracted by some karaoke performances by the ‘groom’, who was followed around by ‘assistants’ afterward refilling his cup of wine that he had to drink with every table.
So—the whole party lasted about 2 hours. I’m not going to lie. I hate to think of how many pigs were slaughtered for this 1 year old’s birthday. It seemed like a huge waste of food. Either way, we were shuffled out of the banquet hall early because we had to leave while it was still fashionable to do so. We walk out into the hallway to meet with the mafia boss’ entourage of 25 stern, unsmiling, and ominous looking ‘friends’.
From here, we left and just went to a club district in Nanjing. It was a great club and basically the concert club where all the bosses/owners of the other clubs in Nanjing come to hang out, so…I got to hang out in style with Nanjing’s high rollers. How do I get myself into this sort of thing?
All I know is that there was a lot of Remy Martin XO, and me looking at my watch realizing, finally, that this is exam week…
Yeah... I should get started on that...
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