Tribe of Dream

This story is so odd that is almost can't be fully explained. I put in a earlier post that even though a lot of things around here become routine some things keep coming up that seem, even still, unendingly weird, this is one of those things. Me and Ken as part of the English Festival, or at least so we thought, had been asked to judge some contest. What contest you may at one ask, well we didn't know, the name of the contest was written in Chinese and translated roughly to Many Culture Dace Street, which it turns out was a surprisingly accurate description. It was scheduled to take place at 2 pm on a Thursday which meant that I had to cancel one of my tutoring sessions for the day. Just as I was about to leave the door I got a text message saying that it was canceled and would be rescheduled. Later that day just as I was about to leave to do some shopping I got another message saying that it was now going to take place in about an hour, forcing me to cancel another tutoring session. Of course it really would have been shocking if this even scheduled weeks in advanced would actually have gone off without some sort of change in time or location.

So I go out to the front of the library, the current one not the towering behemoth they're building, and wait for the event to begin. They are setting up by putting a number of tables in a row on three sides of a red walkway they have created, the fourth side being the stairs leading up to the library. They are also setting up a rather large and complicated speaker system that involved running such long extension cords I'm surprised they didn't burn down the library. While all this is going on the time when it was supposed to start has come and gone. One students helpful walks up to me and tells me that they are running late, as is shown by the fact that they are only beginning to assemble this make shift stage area. By the way the second texy message informing me of the new time includes the line "you will be on time," which I was, both times, while they were not. This goes on long enough that I go and get a snack and come back. When I return they have finally set up and me, Ken, and three Chinese people are sitting as judges on one side of this stage like area. We have name tags in English, mine includes my middle name while Ken's does not, and a sheet of direction all helpfully in Chinese. The judge sitting next to us is only able to explain that we are supposed to, "give score."

Ken eventually beacons over one of his students he sees in the crowd and has her translate the page which asks us to score on content, presentation, and some other things up to a total of 10. There is an introduction in which one of my students plays the violin which goes more or less smoothly though I notice at this point they aren't speaking any English. I figure it must just be the introduction nothing important is going on. Then the first group comes up. We have deduced that each group is probably representing some culture, though were not sure if they mean foreign or domestic. The first group comes up and one girl in some sort of traditional looking cloths, don't ask me what tradition, begins to play some instrument that sort of resembles a flute. A person holds a mic up to this but the mic simply broadcast static so loud it drowns out what ever noise she is making, a fact which doesn't seem to be slowing her down. As she is playing, actually for all I know she could have been faking it I couldn't hear anything, a guy reads some information in Chinese. It's at this point when I begin to realize that the whole competition is going to be all in Chinese, despite two out of five of the judges not speaking it.

Only in China would someone think of holding a competition where a couple of the judges have no idea what is happening. After the flute playing there is some traditional dancing while the guy reading the Chinese continues at some length. Then there seems to be a question and answer section where a host of some sort comes out and asks them questions, again all in Chinese. At this point me and Ken are pretty much just sitting around cracking jokes since we have no idea what is going on. Finally some one comes around to collect our judging sheets. I gave them an eight out of ten since I had no idea how to grade them. In fact I gave everyone an eight since I was so confused. Ken said that he heard that communication was 70% nonverbal so he'd grade them on that. The next group which seemed to represent Germany took about three times as long as every other group including giving us some beer, bonus, and having five guys kick around a soccar ball for ten minutes, minus. Then there was a group who we still can't tell what culture they were doing but they did what appeared to be an interpretive dance. There were other groups that continued like this.

The last group had their name written down not in Chinese character like everyone else but in English. Every other group seemed to also have a name that was about a place while the last groups name simply was "Tribe of Dream." They also had a big banner that read something like "One team one dream." They were apparently representing Japan, no small task in a country that still hates the Japanese for WWII. They did the usual stuff I couldn't understand then in the middle they came by and collected our scores while they were still going, since apparently they ahd to wrap up. It was only after that that Tribe of Dream started making hand rolled sushi for the judges and a few lucky people in the crowd. I believe that the first group won, they seemed as good as any I guess. It's just hard to explain sitting there trying to judge a competition while you have no earthly idea what is going on. I think when people ask me from now on what China is like I'm just going to say Tribe of Dream, I think that the sense of confusion this brings will be an appropriate metaphor for living in China.