Surviving the Chinese Wedding

by Ernie Diaz

It’s wedding season in China again. Time for young

couples across the land to make sure the Han race doesn’t die out, but not before a formalized ceremony to make procreation socially acceptable.

For the most part, all this means to you is a sudden profusion of non-official motorcades. You see, no union of any consequence can start without one, so that the wedding party can announce to the world at large, which neither knows them nor cares, “Look! We’re rich enough to rent these black sedans for a day.” Be a mensch and act impressed by giving the motorcade a thumbs up, especially if it’s composed of Volkswagen Santanas.

Often though, perhaps inevitably, you will be invited to a Chinese wedding. Think twice before turning down the invitation. In all likelihood you are being counted on to function as an “honored guest”, a totem of face and good fortune. Only the gravest excuse will prevent your erstwhile host from assuming you’re trying to hex the nuptials. Try this one: “Bu hao yisi. The patriarch of my family died on the date in question, and honor prevents me from celebrating on that day.”

Want to go, for the cross-cultural experience? Excellent. The following tips will make sure you don’t inadvertently curse the new family for seven generations, or come to at a People’s Hospital with a tube down your throat.

Do

Dress up. At least long sleeves and slacks for fellows. Ladies, a painstaking hairdo will score big points, since hair-arranging was pretty much all Chinese ladies of consequence did until the Liberation. Yeah, there’ll be a few underfed looking guys with t-shirts and grubby fingernails, but only in a beggars-at-the-feast capacity, to reflect the Sakyamuni-like compassion of the hosts. Your casual duds can easily be construed as an insult.

Give money, not gifts. Only pink paper, please, but don’t go overboard. Everyone else invited will soon know how much you gave – and feeling richer than the Westerner is the warmest, fuzziest guest prize of all.

Accept that shot of baijiu and cigarette, if you’re a man and wish to retain your status as one. Here’s how to bow out of the heroics gracefully. Simply wet your lips with the befouled sorghum for each of the thousand toasts. After the fight is over for the honor of lighting your Lesser Panda coffin-nail, make a few appreciative puffs and leave it in the ashtray to die. Ladies, your revenge for the elaborate hair. You can make all toasts with nothing more dangerous than a glass of fruit juice.

Attempt to engage in a little Mandarin conversation. A clumsy ni hao and xie xie will delight fellow guests at your circular table, in the same manner a talking parrot would at a Western wedding. You will soon be at the receiving end of rapid-fire, inflected Putonghua the likes of which your illegally downloaded Berlitz course never prepared you for. Relax, here’s the greatest trick for easy Chinese you’ll read all day. Simply repeat the last two or three sounds your interlocutor makes, thusly:

Them- “Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah

cheng shi ji!”

You-”Cheng shi ji, eh? Mmmm…”

Them-”Dui! Mei tsuo! Blahblahblahblahblah….”

Repeat until your partner is convinced Westerners aren’t so different after all.

Don’t

Get involved in a drinking game. Even those of you for whom being a big drinker is a cornerstone of your identity. It will not be pretty. It will resemble an interracial Mainland scrap, in that every Han male in the vicinity will cheerfully gang up on you and leave you on the floor unconscious.

Say how pretty the bride is, or make appreciative gestures. This will confirm for guests their suspicions about why you came to China. Also a no-no, for that matter, are any Wedding Crashers -style capers. All nubile females at a Chinese wedding are duty-bound to act with the utmost propriety. If any woman welcomes your baijiu-soaked advances, or god forbid initiates, a quick survey of the room will reveal her hardscrabble family members, eyeing you like a Holstein at a rancher’s auction.

Help yourself abundantly to the good dishes. More likely than not, you will hold top rank at your table. Whenever a new dish arrives, the lazy susan will be spun so that you are the lucky winner. Even if you’re comfortable with this unmerited star treatment, refrain from overlarge slabs of the whitefish, or more than one of the ribs. Your self-indulgence will not go unmarked, and at least a few of your table mates see this kind of food much more rarely than thou.

Answer questions honestly. At least those no-win questions some wiseacre, understandably resenting your temporary star power, asks for the purpose of taking you down a peg in the eyes of other guests who think a foreign devil is a big deal.

Here are the big three, with suggested answers. Remember, it’s nothing personal. You wanna be a big star, you gotta deal with the paps.

Them- “How much money do you make?”

You – “Not too much.”

Them- “Do you like Chinese girls?”

You- “I love everybody.”

(Or hate everybody, if you’ve got a flare for the irony.)

Them- “Which is better, your country or China?”

You- “Ai wo Zhonghua.”

(Say it with a twinkle in your eye so it doesn’t sound like you’re pandering.)