China Segment

The main event at all Chinese weddings is the banquet, which is very much like the Western wedding reception, without the dance. There are speeches, food, wine, and more food. It’s a good time and I highly recommend cozying up to some local friends to get invited. In fact, in Shanghai some people have told me that having an outsider, particularly a white one, is lucky. Anyway it’s a fun time and a good experience.

Being the groom however is different. If you remember it, that is.

At the reception, the bride is busy changing outfits every 20 minutes so she doesn’t have much of a chance to eat or spend time with the groom. It’s like the Oscar’s and she’s the host. The groom, meanwhile, takes a quick chance to scarf down everything he can get his chopsticks on. If you’re gettin’ hitched in China, I highly recommend eating anything bread-like or lots of rice, the real heavy things that will not prevent you from getting drunk, but perhaps slow down the rate at which the alcohol you will soon consume enters into your blood stream. Don’t waste your time with the vegetables and light seafoods that you might otherwise savor. Your time of drunkenness is approaching.

After the speeches are done and the bride has changed into her final outfit of the night, the happy new couple proceed to go around to each table and toast the guests. In fact, quite often they have to toast each person. 白酒 (Baijiu) is the traditional drink of choice for the groom, though if you’re relatives are nice and know you’re a light-weight they’ll let you drink ‘yellow rice wine’ or wine. Some brides drink a little, but often not at all as many Chinese girls turn beet red when they consume alcohol, and though red is lucky and is everywhere on the wedding day, it wouldn’t do to have the bride look like a bright red tomato. So she is excused, for the most part drinking 7-up, Coca-Cola, or whatever other awful drinks might be about. (What is this new obsession with soda everywhere?)

The groom has no such escape clause even if he’s a redder (someone who turns red upon drinking… don’t look it up, I just made it up). There can be well over 100 guests at a wedding - we are talking about Chinese families here - they’ll invite distant family you’ve never met, the parents’ friends, and of all things ‘associates’ and business partners of the parents. So there are lots of people you don’t care about, never met, but you have to toast them for coming (they are giving you money after all) and do them the honor of drinking with them. And when it comes to drinking it’s all about face.

Ok grooms, now try to stay relatively sober for your wedding night if you can. You and the bride are accompanied by the equivalent of a best man and bridesmaid as you go around the banquet hall toasting the guests. If you don’t drink as much as them or try to just sip a little you’ll get queer looks and hurt feelings. They’ll insist you drink more. Some ladies will take their only drink of the night, just to help you get pissed. I guess it sends you off into marriagehood in style, but that’s what we have Bachelor Stags for in the West.

The best man and bridesmaid are there to keep order, re-fill your drinks, and protect you both from getting too sloshed. They are crafty in China. Water or 7-Up/Sprite can substitute for baijiu, or at least dilute it. Same goes for grape juice and wine (it’s always red wine in China). As you go around they’ll help by either drinking some of the glass for you or de-spiking it.

Thankfully, though my best man was a laowai and didn’t know any better, my wife’s cousin helped me out and brought in de-spiked bottles of wine. He had saved old wine bottles and then filled them with grape juice before the wedding. I walked around toasting like it was a breeze (well, faking that it was hurting me actually). Rachel’s family also was forgiving and mostly let us just toast whole tables instead of each individual. Only one uncle, one of Rachel’s Gufus, called me on the wine and made me drink his instead. I ended up quite sick to my stomach from all the grape juice, but thankfully not too intoxicated. What percentage of grooms in China are actually still standing by the time they get to their honeymoon suite?

As you toast, the wedding basically ends for the guests. They are free to go after you toast them but not before. So people sidle out and go as they please. Rachel and I met quite a few of our guests at the door after the toasting was done, but some people had already left. I suppose it’s like the end of a wedding where there is a dance involved and everyone just goes home in their own time. In China however, the bride and groom can’t leave early - they stick it out till the end… unless of course a trip to the emergency ward is in need for the blotto groom.

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