Words Fail Me

Yesterday, I got to experience my first 年会 (nián huì, literally “year meeting”) where, traditionally, Chinese companies have at the end of their (lunar) year and just before the. Chinese New Year and — based on my one data point — is something like a company Christmas party crossed with a high school talent contest, a Chinese banquet, and a shitty wedding reception .

It was held at a hotel about a mile away from work. At 3pm we arrived to be randomly assigned to different tables in a bid to break up cliques and meet new people. The Chinese were having none of that. I arrived at my assigned table #26 to find the number covered with a handwritten “Reserved for Consumer Products” sign and a table full of people with various table numbers. They kicked me out and swapped my #26 card with a #3 card. I ran into my coworker Lillian who said “My friends are at table #3!” so she grabbed my card and gave me a #25.I sat at table #25 — at the absolute back corner, at the “ex-boyfriends” table at a wedding reception — and pouted. Luckily, Xiaohan got a #25 ticket and sat next to me. My snarky coworker Shelli bucked the rules and sat on the other side.

Spoiler alert: it ran from 3pm to 9pm.

There were speeches. And power point presentations. And then course after course of half-delicious-half-inedible Chinese food. Eli — in full Chinese regalia — was co-m.c. for part of the evening.

There was a celebration of all the 老外 — the non-Chinese co-workers — from America (Murica!), Canada, Colombia, Spain, Italy, France, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Korea. Then there was a celebration of the workers from across 26 Chinese provinces, including the mainland, Hong Kong, and (gulp) Taiwan. (Simultaneously, Sherri and I stood up and photographed this slide.)

What followed was a bit of a blur. Lots of performance by Chinese coworkers interspersed with five “lucky draw” (raffles) with prizes ranging from gift cards to an iPhone 6. There was a talented woman belting out “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, a traditional Xinjiang dance number, a band with a singer who sing just a little too flat, a woman belting out a tradition Peking Opera number, plus — I shit you not — a sexy dance number choreographed to “Wiggle Wiggle”. Something like this:

The irony that most of the girls were from Human Resources was not lost on us.

It was a long night. Only late did I discover that most of my expat friends had been absconding down to the hotel bar in shifts without me. Regardless, afterward, most of the expats met up at the Shanghai Brewery to swap war stories.