christmastime is here

At almost the eleventh hour the Shenzhen Education Bureau – that is, that peculiar section of the Shenzhen municipal government that is “responsible” for us in the way an insurance agent is “responsible” for your medical bills – has decided to throw us a Christmas party after all.  Magnanimous!  Us “foreign expert” Americans+Assorted British Commonwealthers will get a day off on Friday and return to the Silver Lake Hotel from where we all initially sprang into Shenzhen months ago in August, this time to have a banquet and put on “performances” that the Bureau requested us to prepare individually.  Many of the other CTLC teachers grumble at having to do these monkey dances from time to time (some work for schools who ask that they give speeches to the student body, on top of teaching them.)  I was never before asked to show myself off like that (nothing new to see here folks, just another yellow guy) but I confess that in this I kind of see things the way the Bureau might: if I were a city official of a country whose future was armlocked by the West’s combination suplex of financial derivatives and Copenhagen cuckoldry, and around a hundred of those silly Westerners wandered into my hands, I’d probably get a few chuckles out of dressing them up for fools on the stage myself.

But now I’m not so sure.  Faced with the prospect of a forced performance, I would kind of just shrug and compare it to any other time I was asked to play the piano for guests as a child – more casual than the apocalyptic insecurities exploding in your young head make it out to be.  In fact, I’m even now considering a (kind of ridiculous) morning trip into Hong Kong tomorrow to find some Vince Guaraldi sheet music (you know, A Charlie Brown Christmas and all that good stuff.)  I wouldn’t mind at all playing some of those things if I had to (the annual problem just being that by the time I’ve practiced the tunes to snuff, Christmas is usually over).  But instead of a nice and classy piano shindig, my office teachers have asked that I instead learn a dance with them for a holiday celebration in which all teachers at Yucai Third Middle must enact a performance.

This would be a separate deal from the Bureau’s Christmas gathering.  Since I had made some vague plans with my cousin’s family in Hong Kong to go to a theme park for the holidays, I had kind of assumed that I could wiggle out of it by claiming family obligation and disappearing, so I had kind of only half-listened to the appeals of Nana and Wang Laoshi on behalf of the less loquacious left side of the office to learn this dance with them.  But one day when I was sitting at my desk at the front, Wang Laoshi swept into the room and hurriedly closed the door behind her, laughing something about not wanting to be seen.  I looked around behind me.  Four lady teachers looking like they were conspiring something diabolical suddenly noticed that I was in the room with them.  “Aiyah!” yelled Nana, who rushed forward and turned me bodily around.  “Andrew!  Don’t look!”

What would you think was happening?  I didn’t have to guess; actually, once before already the lady teachers of the Third Year English Department had turned our office into a quick changing room and forgotten Andrew the Foreign Teacher like just another piece of mute furniture, so they fixed the problem in much the same way.  But when I heard the tinny lightening bolt sounds of Asian pop music clatter out of a cell phone ringtone, half-heard dots connected in my head and I suspected the dance.

Turning around yielded the sight of four middle aged Chinese ladies sashaying to the clashing sounds of that cell phone and to Nana’s relayed instructions.  “You have to thrust your hips to the side while throwing your hands up,” she was coordinating, just like an aerobics coach at the front of the office and next to my desk.  I sat there in some bewilderment watching them all for a moment until I recognized the music. Oh the horror.  Anything but this.  No.

It was a popular song in South Korea that I had heard about only by virtue of associating with too many Asian people in Los Angeles.  The Wonder Girls may be the girliest girl group from a country that beats out even China for putting superficial American materialism on a pedestal: Julia had delighted once in subjecting me to a YouTube video of their single entitled “Gee,” which had faintly horrified me.  The song that my Chinese colleagues were now dancing to, and asking me to participate in, was the girl band’s other song called “Nobody,” which more than faintly horrified me since the only time I had seen it had been in this video here:

I found it truly monstrous.

Suddenly two other lady teachers burst through the door and watched my office wiggle around on their heels for a while.  One of them cried “too complicated, I’ll never learn this!” and promptly fled.  I considered my own escape options.  “Wiggle your butt more girls!” yelled Nana, who evidently did not think first about whether I understood her Mandarin or not.

Somehow I got out of there, but the next day Nana and Wang Laoshi were badgering me about this again.  “This is not just a girly dance,” protested Nana to my complaints.  “See, look, I will find a video of boys dancing it for you.”  I looked away. I knew what she was going to find and I knew it would not help to ease my mind at all.  Maybe there’s still a way that I can claim family obligation.

Nana found what she was looking for.  “Look, here it is,” she said.

Yes. Not a girly dance at all.