tifanjo

09:09 pm: the worst soccer match i've never seen
since i've been in china, i've heard little grumbles here and there about "meetings".

of course, anyone who has worked in an office thinks they know about the drudgery and uselessness of meetings, but they really do have an entirely different history and meaning in contemporary china.

in the days of the cultural revolution, meetings were a time to denounce anyone and everyone, and be pounded with propaganda most of us westerners have never seen or imagined the likes of (myself included).

now, chinese bosses and political leaders still love meetings. i remember in the school i worked for last year, every wednesday the local staff would be subjected to day-long meetings. they were locked in a little room, listening to the owner of the company spew out useless words until midday when an hour-long break would be taken. in the afternoon, they were all back in the same seats, eyelids drooping and feet tapping impatiently.

"what do you talk about in those meetings?" i asked a local employee once.

"oh, nothing. larry (boss guy) just talks a lot about how we should behave towards the customers and how great this school is, and a lot of other stuff i don't pay attention to."

yesterday, i got a hint of chinese meetings. i was at a friend's sister's house for lunch. we ate, we chatted for a while, we watched really stupid chinese game shows, and when i was literally starting to open my mouth to announce my imminent departure, they asked me if i wanted to see a soccer match between two chinese teams (xinjiang and harbin).

"definitely!" i thought. i like soccer. i've heard the chinese teams are not world-class, but it's still a chance to see a live match. it was 3:30pm local time. the match started at 6:00. i was about to say "i'll run home and grab a jacket" when they announced we should leave right away to avoid unmanageably crowded buses and a packed-full stadium.

we ended up on a long bus ride up to the part of town i've been working in for the last month (reliving my awful commute), arriving nearly an hour early. we sat in the uncomfortable stadium seats, anxiously awaiting the beginning of the performances, and the following match.

we waited, and waited, and waited. i started squirming in my seat like a little kid. i paid way too much attention to the 4-year old seated in front of me and developed a strong dislike for her. finally, around 7:00, the performances started.

a replica of the huge tianshan mountains was erected on the field in a painfully slow manner. then, the dances started - a group representing every recognized ethnicity in xinjiang slowly undulated its way around the field.

finally, the dancers and mountains disappeared.

then, groups of random people from random places around xinjiang appeared in formation to march around the field as well. such-and-such group from altai, such-and-such school from changji, some-sort-of dance group from urumqi, the local police from whatever-district. i had a clear view of the door they were appearing from.

one group after another after another marched around and were announced. with growing impatience, i watched the door they were coming from, waiting for the time it would remain empty after one group started marching. it was a damned long time coming.

at this point, i wanted to leave. we had been sitting for hours, the reason we had come still hadn't materialized, and i still had some lesson planning to do that evening (not to mention a long bus ride home).

finally, finally, all the random people nobody really cared about disappeared.

then, the meeting started.

a number of important xinjiang politicians were in attendance. they were introduced and applauded for one by one. the most important one in the group stood up and began speaking. every time, he spoke for a few minutes in uyghur, then would translate into chinese. it was all utterly uninteresting and useless.

废话！(loose translation: nonsense, useless words) my friend shouted over and over again. he continued speaking. we leaned over and held our heads in our hands.

when he finished, another politician began speaking.

where's the soccer? i was thinking. it was already after 9:00 and my mind was on the long bus ride home and my unplanned lesson for my early sunday morning class.

people were hemorrhaging out of the stadium and it soon became clear that the majority of the audience didn't give a damn about the soccer game; they just wanted to see the dance performance.

i said to my friend "i can't take it much longer", and she said the magic words, "let's go?"

so we joined the masses of people leaving the soccer game before the soccer game even began, and found bus after bus so packed with people that we caught a taxi down the road a bit where we could actually get on a bus before the mobs arrived.

i came home, thinking it rather silly to go to a soccer game with no intention of watching the match, and gradually started to see it in another light.

this is the modern china. they still have meetings; they still listen to the same old propaganda, but now they have the freedom to roll their eyes, get up, and walk out (in some situations, at least).

in my dreams, i cheered for the xinjiang team.