Rock Star

Yesterday I went to what was described to me as some sort of opening ceremony for some sort of sporting meet to be held in Changzhou. I basically figured it was like the expo I had gone to some weeks earlier and they wanted some foreigners to be in the crowd to make it more international or something. What I didn't expect was that I would be part of the opening ceremony. Me and a few of the other foreigner teachers had lunch with Teddy at the hotel before taking a bus to near the big stadium that the city of Changzhou recently built. The stadium has curved round sides and looks something like a cross between the Birds Nest in Beijing and a alien space ship. Once we got out of our ride we then immediately got on another bus which took us about 15 feet to some sort of staging area. Walking around were all sorts of people wearing matching color codded uniforms. There were what looked like city maintenance workers wearing orange, police wearing green, and nurses wearing pink. Next to all this was an small rabble of foreigners wearing whatever they had on. I'm told there are about 2,000 registered foreigners in the Changzhou area, making us about 1 in 1,000, I think most of those who actually lived in the city were here. They gave us little flags with our home countries colors on them so you could identify who was from where by sight. I got to talking to the people and there was quite an interesting mix. Besides the business men in suits, and there children mulling around there were quite a few people about my age. I meet Lee the Australian guy who has TB, and a couple of other Australian people who were working as engineers. I meet some more people from Germany also. The most interesting group was a couple from New Zealand, we had a big debate if there flag was Australia or New Zealand since they look so similar, both have the Union Jack and the Southern Cross, though Australians Southern Cross has 6 stars and they are white. This older couple weren't teachers by training but they had been in China for a few years teaching English. It reminded me of an article someone sent me about retired people using teaching English to fund retirement travels.

After a while they tried to organize us into lines. All the Chinese people where neatly standing in lines and marching around, but despite there best efforts we just sort of mulled around in a giant mob. As we approached the stadium it became clear that we were going to walk around the track inside this giant stadium while everyone looked at us. We waited our turn then walked into this huge mostly full stadium to thunderous applause. Everything always seems crazy in China but I certainly wasn't expecting to be treated like an athlete at the start of the Olympics. We just sort of slowly walked around this huge track while we waved and a lot of us took videos. I'm not sure I can really describe the feel of having thousands of people clap and wave at you, but it's pretty unnerving. The video to the left is of me first walking in. The voice you can sometimes hear saying things like "Oh my God," is that of the older New Zealand gentlemen. After we marched around waving, taking pictures and holding out flags we stopped in the middle of the stadium with all the other groups. It was sort of hard to see what was going on but there were some speeches given while we stood and looked around. The other groups stood at attention looking froward but we just mulled about and turned any which way. That part wasn't quite so unnerving since I was lost in a big crowd in the middle of this stadium.

After the speeches were done we walked up to our seats, which were basically in the VIP section next to where all the speeches had been given from. What went on then was the largest display of showmanship I've ever seen first hand. Group after group of performers spilled out on to the field and gave one carefully choreographed performance after another for about an hour. The Chinese are really great at mass organization and besides having maybe 2,000 performers they had a huge section of people to hold up cards to make pictures who changes and moved to animate the picture. The video here is of one of those performances. All the performances were to a loud set of music that was blasted over the stadiums speaker system. Instead of clapping people used these little noise making toys which actually produced a ton more sound then clapping would have. The performances included a set of hot air balloons dropping confetti, a series of balloons and doves being released and a set of incredibly loud and close fireworks at the end. I can only imagine how spectacular the opening ceremony of the Olympics must have been if the Changzhou opening ceremony was this amazing. There are a ton more pictures on flickr and I've changed the link so you now just see the more recent pictures, but they're all still there if you click around. I'd comment more on how overwhelming this all was but it just seems to be one in a long line of completely unexpected and remarkable things I've had happen to me in China, I never thought I'd get to be a rock star.

P.S.
Turns out the Dove chocolate I bought the other day may have been recalled, the recall actually isn't that specific but I'm throwing the rest out just in case.