lao gong

so, yesterday I also spent all day laying very still on my back sipping Fanta, but this was no food poisoning or stomach flu. No, this was the classic hangover. On Wednesday night, I accepted an invitation to go out to dinner with a wealthy Chinese business man and his colleagues. The meal was in an extremely fancy seafood restaurant (which occupied an entire building). We had a private room with about 15 people in attendance total. Most were either wealthy business men or Communist party leaders. Like any fancy dinner, the host has two goals: 1) impress the guests by enormous quantities of fancy food, and 2) try to drink everyone under the table. According to Chinese custom, it is rude to not drink as much as one's host, or to refuse a toast. The word for "cheers" in Chinese is "gan bei" which means "bottoms up," or literally, "dry the glass," so there's not really much room for sipping. The meal was very interesting, mainly because the star feature of the meal was sea cucumber, which is an extremely expensive delicacy (you can buy gift boxes in the supermarket for about 100 American dollars). Although it looked like a large slug, it actually turned out to be surprisingly tasty, if a bit gelatinous. The meal was paid for by one of the Communist party leaders named Gong, who is known as "lao gong" could mean old Gong, but in this case is a colloquial term for husband. So after about 3 hours, 10 (increasingly full) glasses of expensive white wine, and several peking ducks and sea cucumbers later, we all got up to sing karaoke. We got into a car (the driver seemed to be slightly more sober, or at least I hope) and drove to an extremely fancy karaoke den. In China, karaoke is THE nightime entertainment, and it involves renting a room with a large tv and sound system, and then ordering an array of snacks and drinks. When I go with my friends, the snacks consist of sunflower seeds and the drinks are Qingdao beers and waters. This time, the snacks included carved pineapple sculptures and the drink was Chivas whiskey mixed with sprite and tonic water. You can either take turns or all sing communally, and usually there's a bit of both. Of course, as a foreigner who can sing some Chinese songs, it meant I was center stage for quite a while. As the night went on though, we all became exceedingly drunk, as the nonstop toasting didn't stop. At one point, I remember singing (or by that point I should say drunkenly crooning into the microphone) "The East is Red" with the communist party official. Oh well, at least when I'm really drunk and making a fool of myself, I am still culturally appropriate.



I have one other unrelated funny story about lao gong. I had my class of 5 year olds today, and we were reviewing family members. I asked them what family members they had, and amidst all the shouts of "grandmother!" "father!" etc., one boy said "I have a lao gong!" (which again means husband). My TA and I did a double take, and I asked my student, "who is your lao gong." He said, "my dad is." After that my TA explained that lao gong definitely did NOT mean father.