SJTU Style (part 1)

Last night we went to the SJTU Mechanical Engineering Department's annual New Years party. We got the afternoon off from class and took a bus over to Min Hang (the campus we will be in after our New Years break). From there we took a bus to an amazingly beautiful hotel where the dinner was located. We got there super early because of the bus schedule so we ended up practicing our dance on the stage and then sitting at our table for a couple of hours and hanging out. All of a sudden, hundreds of Chinese professors showed up and took their seats and the event was started. The banquet hall was huge and there must have been over close to 400 people there including deans, professors, families and children.

The hotel was super fancy and the fact that they wanted us to practice made us a little bit more nervous about their expectations for the night. We ended up being seated with the 9 of us and a new SJTU professor that had just graduated from Stanford and accepted a job with the ME department here in China. He was joined by his wife and their absolutely adorable 18 month old son. We chatted with him a lot about our experiences so far in China and what he would be doing here. When the event started, a professor or two made some presentations in Chinese, of which we understood about 2 words and whatever numbers were printed on the slides. We clapped when they clapped and laughed when they laughed. To the untrained, we looked like we belonged there. Once the food began to be served, we ate like Kings. We were fed duck, beef, chicken, crab, fish, scallops, rice, noodles, soup and anything else you could possibly think of. 

Still not used to my food looking at me from the plate, but it tasted good!

Peanuts are apparently very common around New Years. We're not quite sure what the rest was.

While we ate, the entertainment began. The show was run by two MCs who cracked jokes and bantered about stuff that we had no idea about. They raffled off everything from rice cookers to vacuums and badminton rackets. One of the students at our table managed to score a vacuum cooker, which upon deciding that he couldn't exactly carry it on the plane home, he generously donated to our new friend the professor from Stanford to use in his new home. We got to see other performances including a Rocketts style dance by some Chinese girls, Gangnam Style done by the ME deans and a guy playing the piano (badly) on his iphone (still not sure if that was a joke or not).

SJTU Style

We were getting pretty impatient about our dance not coming up and we weren't really sure if we'd get called up while we were eating or someone was in the bathroom. Eventually, towards the end of the night one of the girls came up to us and let us know that the reason that we were waiting was because we were waiting for the head of the university (who we later found out is also the minister of education for China) to arrive because she wanted to be present for our performance. EEK. We all looked at each other and started sweating, but sure enough 20ish minutes later, the president lady was introduced and she came and shook hands with each of us like the Queen and we hopped up on stage and did our dance. We got a roaring round of applause and then it was all over. The president was literally there for maybe 15 minutes before we were all kicked out. How long she and the rest of the professors stayed after we got on the bus, I don't know but a lot of them were staying at the hotel that night due to the excessive amount of red wine being used to toast all night.

We managed to get some pictures and video of our performance, but not on mine or Joe's cameras. They were also taking professional pictures and video so we should get a copy of that. When we do, we will certainly post them again for you all to see, but we wanted to let you know now that it was a blast to be there and our dance went better than expected. We even got one guy in the back to do the YMCA with us and the program got invited back to dance again next year. I'd call that a success.