Good for you, bad for me…I am suffering again. Nasty “Tonsillitis” . But good for you so I definitely have time to tell you about my last weekend at Yangzhou and the wedding.
I should just put in one word and never say anything else…it was SPECTACULAR. Not even close comparable to anything I have ever seen before!
It is actually really hard to describe how the wedding was like because you won´t believe it unless you have seen it yourself. But I will try my best:-)
When I first arrived in Yangzhou after 5 hour train ride my first thought at the Yangzhou train station was: “Where are the people????” Yangzhou has just about 800 000 citizens when I believe what a cab driver told me or I understood him right me, for Chinese standard nearly nothing.
But it was nice in fact to be in a little bit smaller town to get a little bit more relaxed. I think it is really possible in Yangzhou…certainly not if you´re invited to such a wedding as I was!
After I got into my suit and got a taxi I went to the “Yangzhou State Guesthouse” where the wedding was held. I had no idea how big the compound of the “Guesthouse” is. It is consists of several villas and a big central building all embedded in a big park. The former Chinese president Jiang Zemin was born in Yangzhou and every time he comes back to his hometown he lives in one of the villas on the compound. So as you can imagine the staff is pretty experienced to hold banquets due to uncountable communist party meeting and similar occasions. The actual wedding was held in the “Huafang Garden Room”, a huge ball room where more than 80 tables where brought inside. So overall I would guess there where about 1000 guests. Each of the tables had two bottles of orange juice, two bottles of fairish Chinese red wine, packs of zigs lying around and zwo bottles of “Moutai”, which is rather expensive and deadly strong liquor with about 56%...strong stuff I gotta admit.
I shared my table with five Westerners and another four Chinese people. Spoken language was (of course) English. The tables and chairs were all covered with white cloth and flowers were placed in the middle of the table. An aisle lead through the middle of the room (of course also in white) up to an stage that was more like a runway at some fashion show, probably 20 metres long. At the end of the “runway” there was a stairway with three steps up and there the bride and groom stood in front of an enormously HUGE screen (probably bigger than in many cinemas). Right and left of this big screen were also small screens to which I am coming later on.
The wedding started was supposed to start 6 pm but it was planed that the actual event with presentation of the marrying couple wouldn’t start until 7 pm. Till then everybody was seated and on this enormously big screen a countdown of 60 minutes were seen.
When the actual ceremony started the whole room went dark and some kind of light-show finally focused on the big screen. What now started was nothing less than a Hollywood movie about the love story of Emily and Brian Wang, starring themselves. It was unbelievable how the movie was like! It was no trash self-made You Tube video, it was an actual movie. Decent camera, decent cut…fabulous! The movie was about 35 minutes long and afterwards the REAL show began: First they both performed something equal to a Broadway musical and then someone professional sung a love song while playing the piano. Afterwards it went even more weird/crazy/nice/spectacular! The bride’s father brought her along the aisle to the stage where Bryan, the groom, was waiting for her. On the stage Bryan took over and they went together up the stairs so that they stood right in front of the huge screen. On the screen there was the inside of a church displayed in black in white so that it looked like they were really standing in the church. They start reading their vows and exchanged rings…then finally they kissed and the whole black’n’white church burst into a golden shiny one! Everybody stood up and “Gan Bei” (“Cheers”-with emptying your glas) was shouted all over!!
Just spectacular and now the really good part started…the food ;-) The food was exquisite, the red wine and Moutai did the rest and a real good wedding was created. During the celebration there was a kinda showmaster who introduced games the whole time…only drinking games! Funny as when most of the audience is already completely smashed and they still had to compete!
When I left the wedding to get a drink somewhere with several foreigners I left with a mixture of feelings. I got to admit: This was the by far and probably will be the most spectacular wedding of all times for me. But it wasn’t really traditional, it seemed even that it was completely focused on being “European” or “Western”. That was a little bit sad but I think that is the new movement in China und you can not only see this during weddings but in nearly every aspect of your daily life.
The second thing I didn’t really like (or about what I felt a little bit pitty) was that it was practically just a business wedding with business partners of the family Wang (I can´t complain I was there as a business invitee as well) and I did only see some friends of the bride but just about two or three.
Never the less it was a great experience I did spend another great day in Yangzhou with perfect weather and a lot of nice people! It is really much smaller than Shanghai but it has some charm :-) To live there I wouldn’t change it with SH…never…this city is too good. In my opinion (and I believe there are some more folks out there who think the same) SH is the new NY.
And, Yes, I will convince you during my next posts ;-)
Cheers
L.
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