(almost) A Seasoned Performer

We had our fabulous Spring Festival Performance last week. You will be pleased to hear that we won third prize. Well, technically we won first prize, but there were five first prizes and we won the third first prize. Confused yet? The performance which won the first first prize had a REAL LIVE dog on stage at one point. The beautiful, well-behaved golden retriever may have swayed the judges slightly - even though one of our team, my dance partner Jimmy Shanghai, was a judge. Go figure. Third prize consisted of a hair drier each. This certainly beats last year's prize which apparently consisted of six rolls of toilet paper and 5L of cooking oil each.

Jimmy Shanghai is quite a character, a fairly senior figure despite his relatively young age. He has a cheeky grin and the slick looks of a used-car salesman. Jimmy had a habit of turning up to our afternoon rehearsals reeking of baijiu and unable to remember the dance steps. I half jokingly suggested he refrain from drinking on the day of the concert in order to give a better performance. That day at lunchtime, despite the fact that all the other Chinese men were having a beer or two, Jimmy pointed out that he’d taken my advice and remained on the wagon.

The concert took all afternoon on Tuesday and in fact most of Tuesday morning was spent rehearsing, dressing and having our make-up done. The Australian men in particular were not keen on wearing full make-up for the first time, however the Chinese men seemed entirely used to it and didn't bitch and moan at all.

We were the seventh team to perform, out of fourteen, and I was fairly certain that I was going to be bored by the end and want to leave. However it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. Acts included singing, dancing, comedy skits (one taking the piss out of the Chinese soccer team - apparently they are a national embarrassment who are always losing to the Koreans?!), a group of retirees dressed up as Russians dancing and miming, and some Chinese teachers dressed up as dancing cowgirls.

As I mentioned in an earlier post we did a song and dance routine including a medley of five songs (three in Chinese and two in English) with accompanying dance moves. It was all very YTT and although I bitched and moaned through the entire rehearsal process I had a really good time at the performance.

That said I nearly had a hissy fit and had to remove myself from the temporary green room earlier in the day when the top Chinese knob decided that he would be involved in the performance. On the DAY OF THE PERFORMANCE. This was despite not having attended any of the 20 hrs or so of rehearsals, not knowing the songs, the dance moves or having a costume. Being the top knob no-one told him he couldn't be involved (save face, etc etc) but I was ropable and had to leave the room before I said something and caused a scene. It turned out that the Chinese managed to accommodate him by suggesting he just come on stage for the final song, wearing his suit. It all worked out okay in the end and we came away with the hair driers.

By the way... I have a copy of the performance on dvd. It will be closely guarded and unlikely to see the light of day.