Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Banquets, Banquets, Banquets!

At the end of the last year we never managed to have the traditional end of the year banquet so this semester Ken has been bugging Baker, the communist party person in charge of the English department, to get us a banquet. Banquets are more than just a social function for having fun with colleagues and friends they are all about hierarchy and jobs. Baker as essentially the highest ranking person at most of our banquets is in charge of doing most of the toasting. He moved from Baijou to beer pretty fast and we were all giving him shit about it but with the number of toasts he raised I think he'd have passed out on the table had he been drinking liquor the whole time. His assistant who wants to move up to his job some day was also making the rounds toasting everyone he could. It's basically a sign of importance to toast people all around the table. It's hard to know what Baker's position is relative to the non-part head of the English department since as she is a women she doesn't participate in most of the whole toasting culture. At the banquet when all the Chinese teachers started smoking I went up to my room at got a big cigar I had left over from the US and brought it back down. All the Chinese people were pretty interested in it especially two Japanese teachers who happened to be at the banquet.

2 comments:

bob davis said...

well you escape baijou headache

Mom said...

Smoking and alcohol is a dangerous combination...