Only in China

I judged an English speech competition today and the manor in which I was asked and how the contest was carried out I think exemplify they way things work in China better then almost anything so far. I was asked by Grace, who works for Baker the head of the English department, if I could judge an English speech competition today instead of going to English corner. Honestly I don't care much for English corner so I said what the hell. Now mind you I wasn't actually asked by Grace in person, or even called on the phone, I got a text message yesterday which, along with several grammatical mistakes, asked me to do this. Now the text didn't contain any fancy details like place or exact time those wouldn't come until today about 2 hours before it was supposed to begin. This time I was told it was at 7 and on the 4th floor of the library. Great, except I had no idea which one of the many identical building was the library. I texted Grace back asking and luckily she answered with at least an hour to spare. So I went to the library and walked up to the 4th floor to a big auditorium like room that I wasn't sure was correct until some one pointed me to my seat with a little plaque on it. We were given a sheet with spaces for points in various categories that totaled 100. The speeches began soon after with no mention of how to score it or what the expected range was, or exactly what the difference is between pronunciation and intonation anyways, plus how do you score for dress? The competition consisted of 40 students reciting, mostly from memory, prepared speeches of about 2 minutes long on the topic, "1+1=2?" which as topics go is fine because it forces them to move out of the box slightly. The problem was the all moved out of the box to the exact same place. After about the 6th speech on how two people working together were more then two my eyes just sort of glazed over. Now the topic was given out before hand, so about one fourth of the students spoke on some completely different topic. We heard one on love which was just missing her breaking out into a round of Love is All You Need. Another speech actually contained the line, "life is like a box of choclates," and one person just quoted an Adidas add. The best by far was the person who for no clear reason just gave an excerpt from Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech. It took me a while to figure out what he was doing, plus I haven't head the word negro in a long time. By the time I fianlly had it Ken who was also judging scribbled on a piece of paper to me, "Only in China!"