A Talent Show for the Moon Festival
Red lanterns and a full moon! The waterfall and ponds brightly lit. Even lanterns in the chicken pen! It’s Mid-Autumn Festival time again! I’m even beginning to recognize repeat events. I remember this from last year.Dongguan has double red lanterns hanging from between every tree that lines the avenues. And that’s a lot of lanterns. There must be trees every 20 feet in this big city. To make it more interesting they blocked off part of “
Decca turned to a favorite event: a talent contest. It was incredible. The production was fascinating, and the talent was far better than I expected. On Wednesday night, we traversed our way a couple of blocks within Dahlingshan after a big buffet. The meal included a huge spread of food and the usual compliment of toasts of Great Wall red wine. The venue was a big theater rented out for the main event.
The stage was brilliantly festooned with a matron in the background and strings of the season’s red lanterns. I warmed up the crowd by motioning all to wave to me from different sections of the theater as I took group photos from my front row section. They seemed to get a kick out of it. I felt like the crazy Westerner in a lost Asian movie.
Soon there were contestants dancing and wailing to music of the region. It was quite entertaining. Xiao Pan and Eric greeted the crowd and emceed their way through the evening’s itinerary. They were amazingly cool and calm in front of the crowd of almost 1,000. They even kept the audience calm through a few technical glitches, you know, the usual microphone cutouts and wrong music inherent in such productions.
In between contestants, the judges rated the performances holding cards like at a diving competition. It was cool. And the crowd was unbelievable. Many had whistles, and freely expressed themselves. Some even had banners for their favorite performers. When I arrived, I was intrigued as to why several of the girls from our office had big bouquets of flowers. Their purpose soon became apparent. During each performance, members of the audience would come by the girls on the front row to get a bouquet and take to the performer on the stage. As each performer exited, the flowers were rotated for reuse. Cool! Nice way to honor. Of course, there were a couple of occasions where the entertainer could barely see over their bouquets. But none were ever dropped.
The guards even had an act. I couldn’t figure why so many Decca guards were backstage before the performance. Soon a brigade of over 20 were marching across the stage and did a beautiful military-like song. Of course, I didn’t know any of the music.
Raymond swooned his way through one of the first numbers. He was decked in a beautiful silk oriental shirt. Several of the judges did a song, but that was after the official competition. I guess they have been dubbed “professional” status and were ineligible for the event. And mind you, this was about the fourth of many stages of this competition, which had been held for weeks now in the employees’ quarters. Ah Sing performed a beautiful love song, and I had to make way for his wife Catherine to take a bouquet of flowers to him. She even got a kiss. Simon ended the performances with a beautiful oriental song, with a comfortable style and presence.
By the end, everyone was a winner. There had been many prizes and gifts awarded, including several big televisions and DVD players. They even got me on stage for the grand finale. I couldn’t read the words too well though!
posted by A Bryson (formerly) in China @ 5:44 PM
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