Maybe You Will Prepare a Song.

I am not very good at saying no to a seemingly harmless request. So when approached with an invitation to what we were initially told was a "foreign teacher's party" at the adjacent college, I agreed. After talking further about it, we realized it wasn't a party at all, but a talent show. We had seen something like it at the high school in the large lecture hall. It didn't seem like a big deal, and the performances came from whole classes singing along to a song blared so loud you couldn't hear any of the students. No big deal, I thought. It'll be boring, but we can indulge them with our presence. 

The next day at lunch, two girls from the college knocked on our door and invited us again. Several invitations to the same event from several different people seems to be a common occurrence here. This time, one of the girls asked me if we could prepare a song or dance. I declined, saying we don't really sing. She asked again. I declined again. Then, after seeming near tears, I agreed to see if we could come up with anything. A couple days later, they showed up at our door again with an official invitation. They also wanted to know what we were singing. We hadn't thought about it at all. The best we could come up with was "I'm a little teapot", so I just said we would tell them later. The next day I talked to our English translator Ji Sir, and off-handedly asked if anyone had a guitar. He left the office and returned a few minutes later miraculously carrying a guitar. One of the strings was missing, and it wouldn't really stay in tune, but our options had just gone way up. I feel a bit more comfortable singing with a guitar. I've done that before.

We still had to come up with a song that we could both sing and was easy. After scouring our iTunes library to no avail, we remembered a song that would be perfect for the two of us. It's a simple, happy-go-lucky song from the movie Juno. The best part about it is it's one of those raw sounding songs that's almost enhanced when sung by untrained voices, accompanied by a crappy guitar. So we printed off some of the lyrics and learned it. Over lunch the day of the performance, we once again had a knock on our door and our recruiters were back to take us to the practice. We had had a rough morning and hadn't eaten lunch yet so we declined saying we really didn't need a practice run & we'd be ready to go. So they left only to call back later saying they understood but the teacher in charge wanted us to have a run-through. 

We agreed to meet at 5 to go over to wherever the thing was being held. We were ushered into a large square building, the first 3 floors of which looked like large dining areas. As we rounded the top flight of stairs we realized we had gotten ourselves into something far more serious than we had anticipated. Everyone had costumes on, including a group with traditional Chinese dresses. They quickly ushered us onto a gigantic stage where we played our simple little song and left as soon as we could, with a few utterings of "this is my worst nightmare."

We fretted the next two hours away before returning to the "auditorium". We were some of the last people in the door and were politely ushered in by proper looking girls in traditional Chinese garb. The auditorium was dark, but we could see well enough to know we would be playing in front of a crowd of well over 1000 people, maybe 2. We were given glow sticks before being led through a small aisle to our seats in the back row of the VIP section, complete with padded chairs and bottled water. We sat for a few minutes before the show started watching a video of People's Liberation Army tanks. Soon it was introduction time, which included spotlights, some middle-aged men in dress shirts and ties, and of course, us foreign teachers. We sat right next to Michael, the other English teacher who only teaches at the college, and despite living next door for 3 weeks, finally met him for the first time.

The acts were quite eclectic, ranging from martial arts, to the girls in traditional Chinese dresses doing a stately dance with Chinese fans, to break dancing to Michael Jackson, to...well...us. About half the acts were essentially karaoke, and were obviously huge hits. I'm not sure if we were such a huge hit, but they were courteous and responded enthusiastically when I said "Ni hao" (hello) into the mic before we started. They also clapped along before seemingly losing interest by the end of the song. Before going back to our seats, we both received giant bouquets of flowers. Other performers received other items too, such as giant teddy bears and balloons, usually presented in the middle of a performance.

All in all, it was a successful night. We're still not sure how we got ourselves into that big of a deal. You Taylor folk will understand when we compare it to Airband. It may even have been bigger than that. Anyway, it was a fine experience, but hopefully we won't have to do it again.