Letter from China 2 - Eat As Much As You Can And Run Away

[dolorous_ett]

In a comment to my previous post, someone asked me to talk about the wedding. I suspect she was expecting a day of wonder and festivity - in which case, I'm afraid this post will come as something of a disappointment. There certainly are weddings like that in China, but, as in the UK, people go at getting married in a lot of different ways - with some, you feel part of a sharing, joyous celebration (pardon the revolting expression), and some just feel like someone's gone to a lot of trouble to feed all those people.

This was one of the latter: a classic Eat-As-Much-As-You-Can-And-Run-Away wedding.

I suspect that most of the celebrations had already taken elsewhere. Families in China who are going all out make the ceremony last several days (the last one I attended went on for three - the bride's parents put up tents in the courtyard of their residential compound, hired cooks, installed Mahjong tables and fed anyone who cared to turn up continuously over the first two days - and included groom's friends banging on the door to collect the bride, and having to bribe her friends to let them in with money slipped under the door, Not to mention kowtowing to parents and ancestors and the frightening sight of the rather skinny groom trying to carry the much more robust bride up six flights of steps to their new home). The last day is usually a sort of clear-up operation, to make sure that everyone who should have been included at least gets a good dinner - in a country where face means so much this is very important.

In large weddings, such as this one, the bride and groom often hold this part in two different restaurants to make sure everyone gets a turn. And basically, the whole thing revolves around eating. The bride (or groom or both) tries to welcome people as they come in (if she isn't dead of exhaustion or flattened in the stampede), but the dinner is really the be-all and end-all. There are often too many people for the restaurant to hold, so the guests fill up tables vacated by the last guests – adding to the impetus to stuff your face quickly and leave, especially if you end up not sitting with anyone you know. On this occasion, some old ladies were wandering about with plastic bags, snaffling the more tasty and portable leftovers! Fortunately for the newlyweds, it's also self-financing - you're expected to turn up with a gift of money, which is recorded in a large book together with the donor's name, and kept as a souvenir.

So – here’s the main focus of the occasion – food!

• Cold starters – preserved eggs, cucumber with chilli flakes and garlic, cold roast beef with chilli, cold flat noodles in a chilli sauce, peanuts, sunflower seeds etc
• Roast duck chopped into chunks, with a chilli sauce to dip in, to taste.
• Chicken soup – containing a whole chicken, we pulled off morsels of flesh with our chopsticks and drank the soup later, which was a delicious golden colour.
• Whole prawns in a hot sauce – hard to dismember, but licking the fingers is yummy!
• Sweetcorn fried with green chillies (a personal favourite)
• Chicken chunks in a chilli-bean sauce, with spring onions.
• Whole carp, deep fried, served with a sour chilli sauce and lots of shredded ginger.
• Steamed glazed belly pork on a bed of special rich Guizhou pickled dark cabbage and soy sauce – melts in the mouth, though really more of a winter dish (I love this one too).
• A steamed pudding of sweetened glutinous rice and crystalised fruit.
• Slices of a fried bread concoction, filled with sweet bean paste.
• White rice (if you’ve got any room left!)
• A bottle of one of China’s less innocuous white spirits, which we prudently left in the bottle.

And at the end of it all, I did actually get a chance to meet the bride! The poor girl looked dead on her feet, but still she made the effort to be nice to the stranger – Chinese hospitality at its best.

By now she should be on the way to Xinjiang on her honeymoon, and hopefully enjoying her first sight of deserts, camels and the like. She’s earned it. Good luck to the pair of them.

Comments

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

On this occasion, some old ladies were wandering about with plastic bags, snaffling the more tasty and portable leftovers!

Dude, it sounds just like our English Department Christmas party! (One understands why the grad students do this, but I once caught the director of the composition program, an immensely dignified woman of about sixty, stocking up on leftovers after she'd had a few too many glasses of wine.)

Thanks for posting the menu -- it sounds fantastic!

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Dude, it sounds just like our English Department Christmas party! (One understands why the grad students do this, but I once caught the director of the composition program, an immensely dignified woman of about sixty, stocking up on leftovers after she'd had a few too many glasses of wine.)

We have nothing so blatant at my Department - though we do have a secretary who's been known to spike the punch at parties (playing with fire, relations between some of my colleagues being what they are...)

[hannahmarder.livejournal.com]

Lots of food - excellent! I'd be quite content getting married in China, I think, though like most weddings it sounds like a lot of hard work for the bride and groom. And three days - blimey! Looking forward to the next update on your travels.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

The thought of getting married in China's pretty intimidating to me in a lot of ways - but I do like the thought of getting to wear a bright red frock instead of something white! Not to mention a dinner that's actually self-financing...

I'll update with something China-ish soon I expect - I've not been moving about much, but there are some good pictures. It's just a question of getting to grips with the technology.

[bufo-viridis.livejournal.com]

Exactly - I've been to couple of such events. The rule is: drink the health of the guests - bride and groom doing their round and drinking a toast at each table, meanwhile everybody is stuffin' as fast as possible.
When the tables are more-or-less clear (ca. 1.5 h) everybody just goes away. And that's the end.
Eat, eat, eat and scram.
Aah... Yum.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Yum, indeed. And there's another one planned for today - am fasting in readiness - can't let all that food go to waste, can I?