Pantomimes and Promotions

In an attempt to foster community spirit, the students of Dalian Ligong Daxue have variously been cajoled, guilt tripped, blackmailed or plain forced into rehearsing and attending an end of term 'performance'. I will be dutifully attending tomorrow and anticipate spending much of Christmas Eve sitting in a chilly auditorium with a faint smell of rotting sunflower seed shells watching Russians mime along to Chinese hits. It'll be surreal, if nothing else. The hall appears not to have been used much in its 50 year history, and features moth eaten red velvet curtains, wooden chairs, an antique lighting rig now only capable of backlighting performers and a stage large enough to fit most of the audience on.

I'll be onstage as well, as the Queen of Hearts in a magnificent many tiered card hat in the Edinburgh students' rendition of Alice in Wonderland, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in my class production of A Christmas Carol. A Christmas Carol is likely to bring new meanings to the word 'wooden', and has been a slightly fraught process. I'm mildly proud of having written the script, and assisted in the translation to Chinese, but co-ordinating a cast all of whom speak intermediate Chinese in a variety of accents has been tricky. I suspect the only piece of convincing acting will be Nigerian Scrooge attempting to actually pull the Korean playing his (ex) girlfriend on stage, and that might not really be acting... Also, in any sensible city of 6 million people it should be possible to find one shop selling facepaint. I fear the ghosts are likely to walk onstage tomorrow clad in sheets, eyeshadow, and potentially watercolour paint. My role as the Queen of Hearts however has been much more satisfactory - I am now very well acquainted with the Chinese for 'Off with their heads!', a phrase I feel sure I will find many uses for.

My host family have watched the preparations for all this with some bemusement - my host mother still tells guests the tale of the time when I painted a friend's face green, and covered myself in fake blood for Halloween. The card hat in particular has been the subject of some speculation. I did try and explain to them the story of Alice in Wonderland, but this just resulted in more confusion.

However, the main news is that my host father has just been promoted. He's delighted, as is my host mother. It appears that to get promoted he had to through some kind of self-assessment exercise which culminated in delivering a speech to the leaders along with the other 19 candidates, in what I imagine must be somewhat similar to a hellish Chinese bureaucratic version of The Apprentice. He was pleased enough that he read me the entire speech he had given to them, and was amazed when I understood any of it. I'm also delighted for him - he'd been so anxious about this promotion, and it's good to see him looking relaxed again.