The Wadley Family in China: Crazy Fun, December 14

We had the Ford Christmas party last Friday. It was hillarious! We all went to this hotel, which I thought would be sort of dodgy, but turned out nice. There were about 500 people there in this huge room and we had a Chinese set meal. Certainly not what you would get at the Mandarin, or any other American Chinese restaurant, but much better than I expected (I think I've been here WAY too long). I even ate the jelly soup, though I passed on the sea cucumber and abalone that was in it. Anyway, the great part was the entertainment! I think I've mentioned before how the Chinese LOVE variety shows! You can find one on any evening of the week on Chinese TV. They even have them on Street corners in front of Department stores, and in parks, etc. Anyway, there was a serious variety show planned. There was this Girl and Guy couple who were the "MC's" for the evening. They kept coming out in different outfits!
There would be talent acts, and in between they would have games...like call-in games ( I think they thought they were on TV). People would call in on their cell phones from around the room and win prizes. There were lucky draws. One of the acts was this group of girls from the office from the "Easy English Club" ( a club where they promote better English by having movie nights, "word of the day", and "bathroom culture {can you have a bracket inside a bracket? anyway, this means they put english jokes and stories on the bathroom stalls}. OK, so they did this song and dance. There were about 8 of them...and it was a very sultry song. They had these little identical dresses that were very modest on top, but came down BARELY below their bottoms! We were all just so nervous they would bend over a little too far! So, the idea was if the men wanted to hang out with these women, they needed to come to English club. Funny, huh? Well, they had
several other acts, including a Kung Fu act, and LOTS of singing acts ( Everyone sings here. They love to sing in front of people it seems whether they are good or not). Caitlin and her friend were asked to do a dance, and it was cute. They had these really loud smoke blasts that would shoot confetti and smoke onto the stage at unsuspecting times...Caitlin got a real startled look on her face once when she was dancing and they added some special effects! So, the last act of the evening was a fashion show! Isn't that crazy? I think each of the men and women changed 6-8 times! And they all went to classes for weeks before to prepare! It was so very strange. Can you imagine this at your work party??? Everyone in the room was standing and so excited! I felt like we had been transformed back into the 30's and 40's. Like we were at a Bob Hope show, or the Laurence welk show. As a party gift, we each got a pillow with a face on it that unzips to a
blanket. Jealous?

Here are a couple of pictures of Caitlin's dance. You can see the confetti all over the glass stage. All of the people at the tables aren't visible, but they had a fan-club of children down in front of the stage. She and her friend Maddie did a great job. And... the best part is I didn't have to have costumes made. Good job for finding matching outfits girls! And way to go for keeping your rythym with a puff of smoke straight in your face!

I'll tell you about my Pajama party, too... My friend Jackie is moving to Beijing the end of this week, and we have always talked about how we have wanted to walk around in our Pajamas like so many Chinese ladies do. So, we had a lunch for her, and we all wore our pajamas and walked around out in the streets. It was so much fun! I only have these bright red silk ones, so I had to wear layers, but that's pretty Chinese, too, right? (I had some serious static-cling going on!). Her friend came to take photos of us walking around, and he took TONS of photos. We stopped and had photos with a man on his scooter, with a lady in HER pajamas and her dog in a quilted jacket, and we all sat in the back of a man's bicycle cart. It was great! We had a couple of games before we went on our walk, and I won a face mask (they wear them all the time now that it's cold) and a scarf, so I wore those, too. Pretty fancy!

Here we are taking off on our pajama walk.