Fast Times in Jiaxing

Before I move to my planned topic, can I just say what's happening in Iran right now is both amazing and tragic?  Because it is.  Anyway, over the past few weeks I have determined that Chinese college students can, and often do, have exactly the same kind of fun American college students have way too much of.

Allow me to put this into perspective.  Chinese students live by the exam.  Tests are a major determinate of ones place in this society.  Their test scores are the biggest part of their grade (though not in MY classes) and their grades determine which schools they go to, which determines what kind of jobs they will be given  (For the other great determinate "guanxi"please await future posts).

Anyway, this is the time of year in which high schoolers have taken their college entrance exams, subsequently entering a depressive funk or...and here's where the fun comes in... celebrating!  Usually through travel or karaoke (In fact I ran into several of the former traveling in Leshan, Sichuan--I assume at least one of them had gotten good news).  Fun is a result of success, it is reward, unlike in the West where partying can usually happen on a whim.  

Though not usually under  quite as much pressure as high schoolers, Chinese college students are also very celebratory, something I witnessed first hand.  Two of my classes invited me out for after-term dinners.  It was the usual affair with circular tables and those little wheels in the middle upon which the various dishes are rotated.  Supposedly the occasions were in my honor, by I suspected that these dinners were a end-of-term tradition for every class unit, which tend to be very tightly-knit

The breakdown of fun is as follows:

It begins with dinner, which already tends to be a little wild.  Then comes the beer, which is consumed first via toasts, then more casually without the formality, and then in competitive shots (Please note that binge-drinking does not occur, at least it hasn't around me)

Sometimes it ends there, or sometimes the fun moves to KTV, the staple institution of Chinese karaoke culture.  The drinking stopped for us when we got there, and instead we sobered up with flavored drink.  Unfortunately this meant everyone was sober when I sang, and so they found out how bad I am at karaoke (but not singing in general--that I'm great at).  

While  some people sang somewhat-generic Chinese pop (or Backstreet Boys) the rest played this clever card game where the losers had to perform dares with one another.  The typical Chinese dare usual involves a romantic theme.  Consequently several proposals of marriage were made, one of which was from me.

Leb Wohl