Well today was certainly interesting, I’m super tempted to skip to Yiyi’s wedding but I’ll refrain and tell you about all of it.
Our Business Ethics class ended today, didn’t really even have an ending though, more like just kind of stopped mid-sentence. I’m not really sure I’m convinced you can learn ethical standards by getting a brief outline of what some people thought on various ethical areas. I think you need to either super specialize on a specific type of ethics such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and dive deeply into that subject by reading the actually essays written on such a topic, or instead have students engage in a lot of ethical dilemma cases and discuss the merits of their decisions, and the consequences of their actions. In the end though I think
I did fine in the class, I have a paper to write and that’s about it.
After Ethics I tootled on over to our HR class to catch the last hour of it (our class overlapped) and to take part in the class birthday party which was pretty cool. There was a cake, some music, speeches (yes short speeches), and people sang songs as well. Once that was all wrapped up one of the MBA girls (don’t ask me her name, I forget, though I have an e-mail from her around here somewhere) took me to buy Yiyi’s wedding gift card money holder well wishing envelope thingy, along with some cough drops. She was very sweet and definitely got me out of a bind.
I then went back to my room to prepare for the wedding. One of things that needed to be done was to write Yiyi a letter to go with her present (which in China is money, not very happy about this because to me this is very insulting, but that’s the custom). I’m going to go ahead and post it here, but realize who my audience is and that we talk about things a little bit differently then how I normally would.
Dear Yiyi,
I may have only known you for a month or two, but our friendship will last a life time. Today you’ve taken
your first steps down a wonderful road with your new husband, while sometimes you may get to walk down a nice gentle hill, and other times you may have to climb a steep cliff, but through it all, I believe, your gentle kindness will allow you to keep going and fulfill your dreams. The way may not always be clear but I know you’ll persevere, keep your mind working and your heart open and eventually find your way. I truly wish you the best of luck on your marriage and I hope it is one full of fun and happiness.
Even though other’s may take advantage of it try to keep your soft heart, I think this is one of your best traits and one that you should be very proud of. I may not always be able to be there for you physically, but keep a small part of my soul in your pocket and you’ll always find that I am willing to talk with you about any problem you may have. Even if 20 years have pasted and our memories are faded, you’ll always be welcomed into my home.
Have fun in Japan, I’ll see you when you get back.
Forever your crazy friend,
Kevin Watford
Sadly I realize now there were several mistakes that I had over looked because I forgot to read it out loud :-/ I corrected the big ones now, but I kind of feel bad that they’re in her letter. Hopefully she’ll forgive me.
After this was done, printed, stamped, and stuffed into the envelope along with 400RMB ($58), which is the normal amount for a friend to give, maybe a little on the high end, but I’m not sure, the rules change based off of the person’s status and I’m hoping the Poor Student status wins out over the Rich American status. I then put on my black dress shirt, and pants, with my red and white tie. A spray of cologne later and I was out the door. I was soon joined by Yierm downstairs (I had invited her to come with me) and we headed towards the station.
It should be noted that while Chinese weddings are similar in some respect to Western weddings they differ in many areas. The first of which was the fact that the wedding itself was held in a hotel and not in a temple of some sort as we tend to see in America, which now that I’m participated in the wedding it actually makes more sense to do it this way. But that’ll become apparent as I explain.
Yierm and I hung out around the entrance to the ball room just chit chatting amongst ourselves, though it wasn’t long until I was summoned. Did I ever mention that Yiyi does that? She doesn’t ever say “Hey Kevin can you come over here for a second?” instead she uses the phrase closer to “Kevin come to me.” This is of course likely do to a mistranslation then any actually “royal attitude” that she may have but I still find it amusing. Anyways this “summon” came in the form of a small Chinese woman beckoning us to follow her saying the bride wished to see us.
We followed her into a side room and their Yiyi was in full wedding dress having the finishing touches put onto her hair. She was gorgeous, though she wore a heavy burden of stress in her eyes, and she thanked me for coming and gave me a hug. I told her all would be well, and wished her luck. I was then dismissed.
From there Yierm and I hung out once again outside of the room until eventually we decided to try and find a seat. Yierm suggested that we should just sit anywhere, since that seems to be the custom in Korea and there didn’t seem to be any name cards around the tables. Luckily the groom found us and saved us a grievous mistake, we did in fact have assigned seats (the name cards came later) and guess where we were? No not in the back like I had expected, we were in the front, no, the very front, at the same table as the bride and groom.
I was stunned. Now maybe it’s not as significant in China as it is in the West, but somehow I doubt it. The only other people that sat at our table were Yiyi and the groom’s closest friends (the parents sat at table flanking the table). To be included in Yiyi’s wedding was touching, to be invited to sit at the head table, I was speechless, but the words “truly honored” come strongly to mind. I’m not ever sure if I’ll be able to properly explain to her how much this meant to me.
So we sat at this table in the front of the room, while around us the table gradually began to fill with Chinese friends and family who must have been wondering why the hell there was a white kid sitting at the head table. Needless to say it was a little awkward, but after about 10min the same little Chinese woman came to us and we were once again summed, this time to take pictures with the groom and bride. At this point though, Yierm decided that she needed to go because she double booked her schedule and was suppose to meet someone for language lessons so she decided to leave before the ceremony got started. ... *cough* I’ll leave it at that.
Luckily I was introduced to Leo, a Chinese guy, who also sat next to me at the table, and was kind enough to explain to me what was going on throughout the ceremony. He also happened to be really cool and taught me really useful words in Shanghainese (the local dialect… in Shanghai) such as “excellent,” “what you’re saying is bull shit,” and “let’s kill him/her (if said with a smile, this is seen as humorous).” We hit it off great and I’ll probably be having drinks with him on Wednesday. He also lives really close to be university.
Anyways back to the wedding. During the wedding drinks are provided as well as your food and it’s perfectly acceptable to eat and drink during the ceremony. There is in fact three ceremonies, I’ll refer to them as the White, Blue and Red Ceremony.
The first is the White Ceremony, and in many respects it’s similar to a Western wedding… kind of. Groom stands at the front, and after some time the bride walks down the aisle with her bride’s maid, who also holds the rings. No father escort, no ring bearer, no little girls throwing flowers, and in fact no best men or multiple bride’s maids (only the one). Anyways the bride gets to the groom, they exchange vows, and kiss. Ever seen that really ugly dude go after the hot chick and she’s like cranes her neck back in a desperate attempt to avoid the oncoming smooches? I have to admit that’s exactly what Yiyi looked like when the groom tried to kiss her, I’m not really sure why, but I intend to find out. Maybe it was general shyness about kissing in public, or maybe she wanted the perfect position for the camera, I have no idea but it was funny.
Afterwards they cut the cake (which we never ate… I’m not exactly sure what is done with it, another thing I should ask), they also fill a glass with wine which is stacked on a pyramid made out of other glasses and have it flow over until all the glasses are filled. And then… well then the bride leaves and the groom has a speech or something (things are a little blurred together I admit).
You may be asking yourself why I call them the White, Blue and Red Ceremony. You know ladies how much it sucks having to put on that wedding dress? Imagine having to take it off and put on another dress with a different hair style and everything. Ya that’s right, after some time of eating and what not, another ceremony began but this time with Yiyi in a blue formal dress! At this point I think the two families came together and took pictures and speeches were given. I’m not entirely sure, like I said the whole thing was long, and it kind of all has blurred together in my mind. O at the end Yiyi played a game with a lot of the teenagers on stage, kind of like when our brides throw the flowers behind her, but instead they held hands in a circle and rotated around Yiyi until Yiyi eventually said with her eyes closed to stop. Whoever was in front of her won and got the flowers (though I think they were later reclaimed for some other part of the ceremony to follow).
So after that I found out that we all had numbers underneath our plates and we were going to play a raffle game! O fun. So the first person was picked and they talked in Chinese and all of that fun fun, the girl got a small bear. The second number was called… the second number was my number. Here I am, the only white person in like a five mile radius and I have to walk to the front of the whole audience to answer questions. Of course the first question out of the guys mouth was “can you speak Chinese?” and of course I had to say no.
Luckily Yiyi’s bridesmaid saved me (yes she is also the two-timing hussy I’ve mentioned in other posts) and acted as a translator. I also used like the little bit of Chinese I knew to answer questions as best I could (with moderate success I’m proud to say). So what did I win after that embarrassing spectacle? Why Mr. Wang of course! Mr. Wang is a stuffed new year’s Tiger and also happens to have the same name as my Chinese family name (Wang). I’ll see if I can upload a picture of him at the bottom of this post. By the way it’s also considered very lucky to actually win one of these prizes, I feel doubly lucky that I won a prize with my surnamed stamped onto its forehead.
After more prizes were given away the third ceremony started, and sure enough Yiyi came out in a different dress, a bright gold and red one with a very traditional hair style. Stuffed happened, speeches were given, I think like candles were exchanged by the bride and groom and they used them to light a giant candle of their own. After that Yiyi and the groom finally sat down and had some dinner. They also went around the room several times and had drinks with everyone. It was at this point that I used my new found Shanghainese to inform her that I would like to kill her groom to the delight of everyone at the table. She glared at Leo and informed me that he was a very bad man, and was even crazier than me, but this was all in jest, even the groom was laughing.
Alright so I’m going to go ahead and wrap this post up. Long story short I gave Yiyi her present, and we had a nice intimate moment towards the end where she really wanted to thank me for coming and said how important I was to her. She in fact called me her little brother, which I gotta tell ya kind of brings a tear to my eye. I’ve lost two sisters in my life already, to have a new one that I know I will eventually have to leave is a little heart breaking for me. I think that may be something that only I really fully understand, sorry.
Once the party was over Leo took me back to campus, which was awesome because it meant I didn’t have to find my way back to the station, nor did I have to travel for over an hour and half to get home. He also drives a new Cadillac which was awesome.
Yiyi said she’ll send me pictures from the wedding, in a couple of weeks.
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