A Chinese wedding...

I woke up at 8.30 so i could make sure the students were ok in the morning and left Chris asleep, they were up at 7 and offered to take me for breakfast so I went with them to our little local place for some tasty XiaoLongBao, my favorite!
went back at 9.30 to make sure Chris was ready for 10.30 to mean Elaine, my Chinese teacher, who would take us to the wedding and look after us!

 

Made it to my office at 10.30 and met Elaine and she drove us the 10 minute walk along with 2 other English teachers to the big international hotel in Lingxi where the wedding was to be held.

Walking in a member of staff from the hotel rushed up to us and asked if we needed any help and seemed surprised when we said we were there for the wedding.

 

As we were herded left into a massive room past endless pictures of the couple pasted over various scenic and romantic backdrops we saw all the guests giving small red envelopes to a small team of people staffing a small desk, I can't fully explain what was going on but it was something along the lines of presents for the couple. People put money into the envelope but each envelope is recorded along with who gave how much and in return big boxes of 10 packs of cigarettes are given, depending on how much you had given. People then took these cigarettes and gave the packs out individually to people they knew, friends etc, we got given some by a random stranger just because we were white!
Elaine also explained that the money is almost considered a loan as the couple will have to repay the money, partly through the cigarettes, partly through favours (unless already owed a favour obviously) or through paying back at their wedding, or their children's! The money is intended to help pay for the wedding and such, but who knows!

 

The wedding is based on a Buddhist wedding and starts early in the morning, the groom will at one point arrive at the brides house but will find all the doors closed and guarded by members of the bride's family and friends who will then set the groom challenges he must complete to open the doors and search the house for his wife! The challenges may be questions about her, or their past, or physical challenges like doing so many press-ups or even giving them money! Crazy!

After this is completed then they arrive at their version of a reception, and this is where we came in!

 

The room for the reception was huge with maybe 50 tables and a central aisle down to a stage at the end of the room and we sat down in the corner on a large table but soon got moved to a better seat next to the aisle so we could see better what was going on, and the couple would walk right past our table, very kind of them!

We were sat with a few children, mike and a load of girls, two of which were under 30! Haha.

We were at the end near a small gazebo type tent erected over the isle nearest the door. At the other end of the aisle was a big stage with speakers and covered in flowers and a huge projector showing a slideshow of romantic pictures of the couple and short videos of them along with various wedding related images.

 

We were told that the wedding was actually even bigger and there was a whole separate room for friends who would actually miss the ceremony here and we were in the privileged few who got to sit in and see it live, well, the privileged couple of hundred anyway!

Elaine also explained that the grooms father was the head of the Cangnan county branch of the post office, a high up government position, and so was very, very wealthy, and it was him who was footing the bill for this.

 

The ceremony began with a man on stage introducing the proceedings and Elaine quietly explained that he was a Wenzhou TV celebrity from the state television network who had agreed to host the wedding, for an unnamed fee. After a few minutes of introduction the groom walked down to the small gazebo near our table, soon after the bride joined him wearing a beautiful white dress, and she was only 26!

With various bowing and hugging the bride and groom were 'introduced' to each other's parents and there was a small ceremony joining them in marriage.

The couple then walked down the aisle to the stage with fireworks exploding each side and being handed flowers and presents while the western bridal chorus played on the stereo.

 

The couple gave some speeches and linked arms a drank from cups at the same time, very traditional, and also had a very western wedding cake which they ceremonially cut, before feeding each other some cake. This interesting mix of east and west went on for another 5 – 10 minutes bringing the total to around 20 minutes or so before they walked back down the aisle and out into the hotel, the ceremony over and the meal could begin.

Since Linxi is near the sea the meal had a lot of seafood, I tried everything I was given and some was actually very good but the start was prawns in their shell (which I had no idea how to remove, especially with chopsticks) and crab again, in its shell. Then followed an embarrassing lesson on how to feed myself which resulted in me giving up and eating things already cut into edible sizes!

The lobster was very tasty, as was the rare fish we were served. I also tried some meatballs wrapped in a moss/algae/seaweed type thing which grows only in Outer Mongolia and so was apparently exceptionally rare and expensive. I must admit that I did try the sharks fin soup and unfortunately it was very tasty, possibly my favourite thing I ate, Chris however was not a fan, I'm not sure if that was from his conscience or the taste though…

Each table was given two bottles of wine but on our table everyone was either too young or driving and so responsibility for that fell down to me and Chris to sample them, an expensive French red wine chosen especially which was very tasty but Chris and I were careful to show a good image of foreigners and not let the country down any more than we already are!

After the meal I got chatting with the girls on our table who turned out to be quite good at English and were amused by my awful attempts at Chinese conversation although Elaine was jokingly put out by me talking to other people and not her!

After the compressed ceremony and the meal people started to drift off home and so we did too, we were dropped back at the school at 3.30 and had no plans until 6 when the students from the day before had invited us to see their show, so I decided to get a quick nap.