What Time Do You Call This?

A quirk of life in Hong Kong is that punctuality is far less valued here than it is in Europe, largely because of a dependency on taxis, which are vulnerable to black rain stormsand traffic. An awful combination if there ever was one. This was thrown into relief when the Hubs and I attended our first Chinese wedding in Hong Kong. The invitation arrived two months ago, and cited the reception time as 5pm and the dinner commencement as 8pm. It also contained a mini hong bao (or lai see in this part of the world), which had a token amount in it. I was totally befuddled by this and had to ask some local friends, who told me it was an efficient means of sending the thank-you lai see here. Apparently, it’s the norm here to present the givers of lai see with a thank you, also in the form of a lai see. I suppose it’s the equivalent of a thank you card in western culture. Albeit one that's sent with the invite.

Anyhow, we were frantic on the day of the wedding. It had been raining all day and it was nigh on impossible to get a taxi. We finally arrived at half past five, only to discover that we were apparently two hours too early. Apparently, the tradition of playing mahjong or poker prior to weddings has been scrapped in favour of not actually attending the reception. Shame-faced, we hid our embarrassment in a nearby bar until the wedding was ready to commence.

The banquet itself started at 9pm. Guest spent the hour beforehand eating wedding cake (which was an interesting fruit cake of the sponge and cream variety. It came with layers of hami melon and strawberry) and partaking of the soft drinks. Come 9pm, though, the eating got serious. Chinese banquets are not to be messed with and normally run from eight to sixteen courses. The wedding we were at was somewhere in between with a mere thirteen courses (excluding the wedding cake amuse). We munched through suckling pig (sans glowing eyes*, very sexual looking abalone, evil looking fish
, and copious amounts of goodness. We munched till midnight, pausing only to toast the couple on multiple occasions. The Hubs finally understood why the constant referencing to cognac in Double Impact wasn’t totally bizarre.

I only wish that the banquet hadn’t skipped all the games people play at Chinese weddings. Nothing like making the groom work for it!


* I couldn’t actually find an image that correctly depicts this. When I was younger, suckling pig used to arrive surrounded by pineapple rings cut to look like flowers, with a cherry where the hole is. To finish the presentation, fairy lights were stuffed in the cavity of the pig’s head, and two were pulled through the eye sockets and switched on, so that the pigs would have slightly demonic tendencies.