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I'd Like To Make a Toast...
Monday, September 19, 2005-5:00 PM
I've always shirked the responsibility of toasting other guests at formal dinners and celebrations. After two years in China I can recall only one time that I proposed a toast.
At the going away dinner at the end of my year in Yantai, Shandong, I toasted the other guests at my table with the words, "Rock and roll never die".
Yesterday was Midautumn Festival, the 15th day of the 8th lunar month when friends and family get together, eat moon cakes, and stare at the moon.
Natasha, her brother, and I went to see Natasha's cousin and a few of his coworkers. Almost everyone came from Natasha's hometown, Nanfeng, in Jiangxi province.
It meant I had to venture to part of Guangzhou that doesn't get many foreign visitors. Even though I've been in Guangzhou for an entire year, traveling to a district like this is like traveling to a different country. The apartments are small and cramped. The streets are narrow and crowded. And people aren't used to seeing foreigners.
I was seriously jeopardizing my chances to see "Queer Eye For the Straight Guy' later that evening. From the commercials for that evening's show I saw that this week five fashion-savvy homosexuals were going to offer dressing, grooming, and decorating advice to a mangy heterosexual. I didn't want to miss it.
We ate at 'Xiang Cai', food from Hunan province. I've never liked Xiang Cai before, but I think I was just ordering the wrong dishes. I liked every dish with perhaps the exception of the frog.
Just about every time someone drinks at a Chinese dinner like this, they're toasting someone else. That means if you're thirsty you can either toast someone else or wait until someone toasts you. I usually wait until someone toasts me.
But I figured I've been in China long enough. It's time I started toasting other people. I started paying attention to the perfect time and person to toast.
I was looking around the circular table, trying to find someone with a full cup of beer, who hadn't taken a drink in a long time, who wasn't too far away from me, who wasn't too occupied with his or her food, and who wasn't engaged in a conversation.
Finally, I just toasted Natasha's brother.
After I toasted Natasha's brother, it was only polite to toast the other guests. One by one I toasted the other guests. I spoke so quietly that they mostly didn't realize I was toasting them until I shoved my cup right in front of their eyes.
At the end of the dinner, the other guests had drank so much (by Chinese standards) that they didn't care how weak my attempts at making toasts were. They just wanted to drink.
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