Complete! Complete!

Last night was our first banquet of the conference (I will probably refer to the program I am attending as a conference because that is what the Chinese call it. Don't be fooled though, it is more of a study/vacation because we only have one presentation and the rest of the time we are in class or touring the city). Anyway, back to the banquet.

Walking in the banquet hall, I peer across the room to try and find some of my delegate friends to sit with - WRONG, we all had assigned seating with Chinese Officials at each table. As soon as I arrive at the table I notice two bottles in the middle. One is wine (okay, I can handle that!) and the other is something they like to call bai jiu (or as I like to call it poison/nasal passage way decongestant). I also realize that I am sitting next to the Deputy Director of the Gansu Provincial Foreign Affairs Office. We exchange business cards and he losses interest in me until his translator (whom is one of our guides) decides to tell him that I can speak Chinese. Well, the rest is history and we are now best friends. He decided to talk about the one topic that I know the most vocabulary for, FOOD! Then, Mr. Fang (yes, fang like Fang Pi) decides that I will be his English teacher for the meal and he will be my Chinese teacher for the meal. Every time they bring a new dish out he tells me what the content of the meal is. For example, FISH (he says in Chinese of course Yu), to which I repeat FISH. Then is continues on through the duck, lamb, watermelon, squid, some weird green thing that I translated as cabbage (it wasn't cabbage, but he didn't know that). Mr. Fang was a great host and constantly refilled my wine cup until I learned that is I didn't finish my wine then we couldn't pour more.

GanBei - means cheers in Chinese. This was probably the most popular word used at last night’s banquet. Every five seconds one of the officials decided to ganbei with another official at another table, which meant that everyone at the table had to GANBEI! This wasn't a problem until Mr. Pushy (the Director of the GSFAO) decided that he would come cheers are our table ten times in one hour AND we all had to COMPLETE, COMPLETE (I believe his English vocabulary consisted of ‘complete,’ ‘hello,’ and ‘thank you.’) our drinks. What he meant to say was "get drunk our of your mind and drinking the clear poison we can Bai Jiu!" Sheesh.

It was super though! All the foreign delegates decided we would start a conga line (under the influence of BaiJiu) and dance around the room as some crazy Chinese man who definitely had had too much BaiJiu as well sang a song! After the banquet we went out on the town to a bar and drank some gross Chinese beer, got caught in the rain, took a taxi home, and then went to bed!