Stephen

Ramblings of a seriously bored person in Hainan, China

"I Do" Follow-Up

I attended my friend's wedding dinner a few days ago. The dinner was held at one of the local restaurants here in the city. As the guests entered the restaurant, they were greeted at the entrance by the newly weds in their formal wedding attire. Billy was dressed in a black suit. Kinda hard to make a guy look really sharp but it's amazing how they can make a woman look! Cathy looked amazing. She wore a light pink wedding gown, make-up, hair done, sparkles on her face. I almost didn't recognize her.

As we entered the restaurant, we were happily escorted by the bride's mother to our table. I would estimate there were about 80 folks that attended this wedding dinner. After everyone was seated, "Hear Comes the Bride" started to play and the couple, followed by two young girls throwing red rose petals behind them, entered the restaurant and slowly walked to a small stage located at one end of the restaurant. Once they were on stage, the M.C. introduced the couple to the crowd. There they stood, holding hands, big smiles on their faces and no doubt thinking about their future together (actually thinking, "Man I can't wait until this is over so we can hit the road!").  Everyone then stood, held glasses in the air and yelled, "gan bei" to toast the new couple. After the introduction and the couple was seated at the honor table, three very attractive young ladies then performed a dance number for our enjoyment. While this was going on, the waitresses were busily, actually they were somewhere between a trot and full run, serving the food.

Our dinner comprised of chicken soup. Now this wasn't Campbells Chicken Soup by any stretch of the imagination. This was real chicken soup and what do I mean by that; a whole chicken, head to feet. We also had boiled fish entrails, chopped turtle for the conviences of using chopsticks, another chicken that boiled and commonly known as WenChang chicken (Hainan's famous dish), several vegetable dishes and some other dishes that I have no idea what they were. Needless to say the food was great and I thank you Billy and Cathy!!!

While the initial stages of the food was being served, several other waitresses were going around to each guest and handing out the red envelopes or hongbao. You could say, money envelopes. This beats having to worry about what to kind of gift to buy.

Speaking of the wedding and something I forgot to mention in the earlier post, was a couple of things a lot of us westerners do before the wedding. For example, as far as I know, they don't have bridal showers. Too bad for the bride to be. She doesn't get to listen to all of that pre-marriage trash talk and get embarrassed with the variety of lingerie and no telling what else. And for the groom, no stag party. Too bad....no stripper jumping out of a large baozi.

That enough for now, later.....Homie

posted by: stephenthegreat at 22:01 | link | comments (1) |
china, hainan, haikou city