I attended a Chinese wedding reception for the first time last Sunday – the first of many, since a number of my young teacher friends are engaged to be married. The bride, my colleague Cai Jing, and her husband greeted everyone as they entered the sunlit dining room of a downtown restaurant.


(In this instance, there was no marriage ceremony. The couple has been married for a few months, but since their hometown is in a distant province, this reception was for co-workers and local friends.) As we took our places at large, round dining tables, we found a two-liter bottle of orange-ade, a bottle of bai jiu, and a small heap of unwrapped cigarettes on each table. The dean of the groom’s academic department (Economics) made a speech, as did our dean. Waitresses began serving the cold dishes, followed by course after course of hot dishes. I was surrounded by friends I hadn’t seen all summer, so it was a banquet of food and conversation. As we dined, the bride and groom visited each guest individually with a toast of bai jiu in tiny, stemmed cups.


Minute cups are OK with me – the words "bai jiu" mean "white wine," but the drink is literally grain alcohol that can sometimes contains over 50 percent alcohol. Cai Jing exchanged her white western-style wedding gown for a traditional Chinese gown. We didn’t see Cai Jing and her husband sit down for even a moment throughout the festivities. Despite the formality and dignity of the occasion, our male colleagues played their boisterous, noisy drinking games. It’s unlikely that there was any bai jiu left over at the end of the day, although there may have been a surplus of orange-ade.