Checking my emails, I spot one written in
French from someone called 张大旗, claiming to be
“votre amie cordialement”. As a result of my tendency to hand out my infos to
any Chinese who asks for them, I lose track of new contacts, so I believe her.
Their indistinguishable names don’t exactly help either. Anyway, she is
inviting me to a French wine-imports company celebration, so being the
untroubled free-wheeling Westerner that I am, I go along to this stranger’s
alcohol-fuelled orgy.
I turn up to the stated venue an hour late,
de rigeur. It’s held in a fancy hotel
in the middle of a grey park, which, like Brighton, probably verges on pretty
in the summertime. Apart from two ornamental Ukrainians employed by a White
People-hiring agency, I am the only non-Chinese. I mill about like a loose
grain of rice, and although I drink down any glass that is handed to me, my
brain unfortunately continues to function. So I try one of the ice-breaking
games; a sort of wine-connoisseur poker with related prizes that no one will
ever win. I lose, obviously: after guessing correctly that the wine is French,
I can’t pinpoint its fruity notes or estimate its relatively cheap price. Even
after a year in France I’m still a wine derp.
I mosey over to check out the calligraphy
guy. He’s swiping his big inky brush around with the same deftness as Ainsley
Harriot with a meat cleaver. He doesn’t say a lot, but that’s the thing with
wise grey men in China: the less you say, the wiser you look. He hands me a
toddler brush, motions vaguely at the paper and I write my name in Chinese. He
looks vastly confused, because I’ve written something that sounds like Sally, but most likely translates as “Withered Plum”.
Disdained that I have offended his brush and culture in this way, he lights a
fag and I leave him forever.
A few brave souls dare to approach me to
add me on WeChat and/or give me their card and just as I start to get crabby
about the overload of people talking to me but not TALKING to me, 张大旗 comes over and warmly shakes my hand, saying how happy he is I’m there.
I suddenly remember my “amie” (turns out he’s male) as one of the many who have
accosted me on the aeroplane when the family abandon me in economy class. He
leads me into the grand supper hall to the table of the spare WAGs, most of who
are super friendly but overdo the compliments to the point of supplementary
unease on my part. Then the show begins.
There’s
hosts and everything. Not that I’d know, but it’s what I’d imagine watching the
X Factor is like, with nostalgic background videos and heartrending picture
slideshows and a lucky draw for an enormous air purifier which is outrageously
won by a woman who puts ammonia in her hair. Finally after about an hour of
this fecund gala, the nosh begins to be brought out and there is an attractive
man sitting next to me who speaks fluent English and French. Maybe the wine is
finally kicking in, but I’m rather starting to enjoy myself.
I
indulge in such unsexy greediness that the sexy man remarks on how hungry I
must be. Across the table, the other laydeez have had so much to drink and so
little to eat that one of them is in a coma and vomiting on herself. She falls
on the floor and other drunkards try to help her up, creating a lovely pile of
plastered wealthy Asians. There’s too much food and too much wine; most of
what’s on the table is left untouched and the number of obligatory toasts and
glass clinking is just getting ridiculous.
Eventually张大旗 brings his bloated pink face veering towards me,
to let me know that I am a queen who speaks many languages. I want to escape on
a rocket but another woman tells me we live on the same golf course so
she can give me a lift home. Initially delighted at not having to rush off
early for the bus, I sit there and wait for her. And wait. People begin to
leave. I wait.
On the banquet
tables amidst the weeping mothers and jewel encrusted daddies lies the
luxurious waste of China’s new Baroque: unopened crab appendages, rapidly
browning kumquats, half-smoked cigars and rare steaks whose blood is beginning
to clot. Go outside and you’ll see grannies sweeping the streets for pennies to
fund their son’s son’s education, sustaining on rice porridge and corn milk. With
this in mind, I make friends with the grand piano as I await my ride home and
provide a shitty theme for the imaginary rolling credits.
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