For Jessica’s birthday we had a karaoke party with a bunch friends:

If you haven’t been to a good Chinese karaoke party yet, you’re missing out! Here’s some photos and fun video clips.

Piao Laoshi’s Korean boyfriend gives Jessica a “Happy Birthday Jessica!” shout out in the middle of his song, and elicits praise from some of the ladies who start chanting his name:

Liu Wei, Greg, Dingle and Zhou Jun give a heartfelt(?) rendition of Air Supply’s All Out Of Love:

Cute (they’re engaged):

Jessica got some cute stuffed cows as gifts, since 2009 is the year of the cow.

The cake says, “Happy Birthday, Lin Yi An” (生日快乐林怡安；shēngrì kuàilè lín yí ān). Yí-ān is Jessica’s Chinese name.

This makes two karaoke parties in a row where Bon Jovi has made an appearance in the form of a passionate, Chinese-accented rendition of “It’s My Life”.

I don’t know about office parties, because all the jobs I had in North America weren’t ever office party kind of jobs. Last night’s New Years party for the magazine and associated companies (about 80 people at a hotel banquet) was my first one. I sat next to the big boss at the international table, which had (including me): three Koreans, two Japanese, a Canadian, a Scot, a Chinese (the boss), and an American. The Koreans were fun, the Japanese were almost invisible, the Scot could really drink, and the American was considered masculine because she smoked (they told her so).

The Fun
So I don’t know how to compare this to the average North American office party. Do office parties in America involve nice banquets, door prizes, co-workers singing to karaoke tracks, fun balloon popping competitions, cute homemade videos of all the staff, and good food? They should; it was actually kind of fun. Do most people suddenly get up and leave, as if given some sudden, subtle signal? That was kind of weird, like all these happy-looking people were really just waiting for their first chance to split (I don’t think they really were).

The Booze
What about the booze? Do American office parties have endless beer, wine, and báijiǔ (白酒)? You know, in a sad sort of way I’m actually thankful that East Asians are genetically predisposed to be weaker drinkers; it makes it a little easier to remain both polite (if the boss toasts you…) and un-inebriated over the course of an evening. I’m not a big drinker and I flat out refuse to get drunk, but I don’t mind doing my duty within those limits, so it’s convenient that the people whom I don’t want to offend will probably quickly reach the point where they won’t remember me avoiding all those extra shots anyway.

The KTV
And what about an an ear-splitting karaoke after-party that involves revolutionary songs from elementary school, Bon Jovi, and an impromptu, drunken, yet sincere pre-national anthem speech about loving communism by a guy who’s made it rich in China’s current economy? I have to admit, if they don’t do karaoke after-parties in America then they are seriously missing out. Chinese karaoke parties are fun. It’s loud and crowded and rènao (热闹) the way Chinese like it. Everyone gets to have fun singing their hearts out and no one really cares if they don’t sound that good (this is also true of alcohol-free karaoke parties).

I left a little after 11pm (pregnant wife at home and all) after doing my obligatory KTV duty (it’s always satisfying to get the surprised looks when a lǎowài sings in Chinese) but before they made good their threat of making the lǎowàis sing Hotel California (I don’t know why it’s always Hotel California). After a half-hour flat-tire bike ride home, I discovered Jessica still had friends over. But the holidays end tomorrow morning at 8:05!

Of course, the day you teach a lesson to foreigners about dealing with culture stress and not withdrawing from the culture and people even when you feel like it is the day one of your local friends will inadvertently push a whole bunch of your cultural-annoyance buttons.

The NGO that we’re with in China has “culture lectures” on Saturday mornings every so many weeks. I did the one this morning, about how to handle culture stress, choosing to engage the culture and its people even when you feel like withdrawing from it, and looking at your lifestyle, living habits, attitudes, etc. to see if they are helping or hindering your cultural adjustment. I suppose I was asking for it.

After a late lunch and walk in the park, Jessica and I went home and fell asleep reading books on the couch. We were tired and we had an after-dinner karaoke party planned for the evening. A friend phoned about karaoke details. He wasn’t supposed to phone me. I’d already told him to wait for me to phone him because I was waiting to hear from someone else when and where to meet later that night. But he phoned anyway, and in a blast of partially-intelligible Chinglish (he often insists on trying his English on us, even though we refuse to speak it to him) destroyed my nap. Later, Jessica and I had dinner and were watching a movie when he called again to tell us he was on the way over and just five minutes away, even though he wasn’t supposed to come over for another hour and half. So we watched the last hour of the movie with much less snuggling but a lot more Chinglish. I was a little annoyed; Chinese people often feel free to impose upon other people’s personal space and time in ways that North Americans rarely if ever would. Of course, I was further annoyed at remembering all the stuff we’d discussed that morning in the culture class.

It’s dumb to get annoyed at Chinese people for not acting like North Americans (or vice versa), but that doesn’t mean what they do still isn’t annoying sometimes. Still, I got over it and we ended up having a really fun time, proving once again that it’s usually worth it to put cultural preferences aside and just have fun with people. And who would have guessed that this guy can sing Micheal Bolton songs?

This is the scene immediately after the Sunday morning service concludes at Tianjin’s Shānxī Lù church; people have to wait for some personal prayer space at the altar:

Shānxī Lù is a TSPM church (Three-Self Patriotic Movement). These kinds of Chinese churches are also sometimes called registered churches, official churches, or government churches, depending on the bias of the author. Here’s an official version of what that means: China’s Protestant Churches to Adhere to “Three-Self” Principles. This church seats several hundred, and it’s been full each of the couple times I dropped in.

Karaoke Party with the teachers!
We sang karaoke for FOUR HOURS this afternoon with some of our teachers and classmates. Tons of fun, and our throats are sore now. I’d include a video clip of one of our teachers singing Wannabe by the Spice Girls, but she’d probably kill me. We sang a mix of Chinese and English songs. I once read somewhere that one of the reasons Mainlanders love karaoke so much is because it’s one of the few places where they get to explicitly verbally express romantic feelings. On the way out we passed a room where a middle-aged businessman was totally rocking out to some love ballad.

Burning Day
Riding back from the karaoke place we discovered that it’s another burning night, when the neighbours send ghost money to their dead relatives. This was taken right outside our apartment building:

See “There’s hell to pay” or the related links below for more about burning stuff for dead relatives.

You can’t live in China long without eventually finding yourself at a karaoke party. It was my first time, Jessica’s second. The place was huge; several floors of karaoke rooms to which “swanky” can’t even begin to do justice. Apparently they chose this particular place because it’s known for its nice rooms and good speakers, rather than its pretty girls and additional services. Chuck and Kristi had to open with Hotel California, and before we were done we’d made it through Can You Feel the Love Tonight, Somewhere Out There, Every Thing I Do (I Do it for You), Eternal Flame, some Simon and Garfunkel, and I can’t even remember what else. It was actually more fun than I imagined it would be.

A Party Secretary at Tianjin University, who is really supportive of the Bright Future project, threw a karaoke party for the teachers and students from this semester’s Bright Future class. Officially, it was to honour Chuck, who’s worked as the Bright Future intern the last several months. Click the photos to see them full size, mouseover for people’s names.

If only they had a Disney music section…