Gan bei!

According to the Google search I just did, the first Tuesday of the first full week in May is Teacher Appreciation Day in the United States.
I don't really have any memories of this holiday as a student, but I'm sure that teachers get some sort of gift from the school and maybe a card or two from students whose parents are teachers. As I tried to explain this to the Chinese teachers, I might as well have told them that we publicly flog our educators and steal their shoes.
You see, yesterday was Teachers' Day in China, and it is a big deal here. I got a call from Maggie, my contact teacher (aka translator and guide to China), at 7:30am telling me that "maybe you should come to the flag raising ceremony now" - which means "you should have been at the flag raising ceremony 10 minutes ago". So I throw on some clothes and run down the 6 flights of stairs from my apartment and up the 3 flights of stairs to the office, where Maggie is waiting. "Ok, we'll go" she says and we rush to the playground/track/open area where all of the student are lined up military-style, filling the yard. A song that I recognize as the national anthem is playing over the loudspeaker and a group of 9th graders are hoisting the flag up a pole. After the flag is up, a couple of people step forward to give speeches and I am shuffled to the front with the other new teachers, where a group of adorable kindergartners in their little uniforms give each of us a bouquet of flowers that is approximately as big as they are. A couple of speeches later we are all allowed to file back into the school and get the day started.
The day proceeded fairly normally, except for the fact that everyone was giving everyone gifts and flowers and chattering about the fancy dinner we would have that night. This dinner is notorious for having lots of good food and lots of drinking...and because I am the only one in the school that does not have an Asian level of alcohol tolerance, I am an obvious target. The debauchery started with the all too familiar yell: "Amelia! Ok, we go now"
The restaurant was pretty nice, and "very famous" according to Maggie. Each place was set with the typical Chinese dishes and two glasses: one for milk and one for red wine. To me, this milk business is pretty bizarre, and it became even more so when I tried the milk and it tasted like a cross between milk and yogurt...yet another example of the many ways in which China is similar to the west, yet so very different.
The dinner was really good and there was a lot of toasting and good cheer all around. It wasn't until everyone had finished eating, though, that the real drinking started.
I knew that things were going to get crazy when the principal came to our table with a carafe of wine. He sat down and said that he hopes I have a very good year at their school and that he wants to have a special toast with Maggie and me. He starts to pour wine in my glass and tells me that he'll pour until I say "stop". When the glass was 2/3 full he stopped pouring, which means he either temporarily forgot how to speak English, or it was a blatant lie from the beginning. He did the same thing to Maggie and then started to fill his own glass. He only poured a swallowful before yelling "stop!" and then started laughing and told us that that's the way to do it. He of course filled his glass and gave a very nice toast, finishing with "gan bei!"
"Gan bei" is like "cheers", but you have to finish your drink or it is considered impolite. So, like the champ that I am, I finish that huge glass of wine and got a round of applause for doing so. Poor Maggie, who is a tiny Chinese woman, also finished hers, and as she set the empty glass down she turned to me and said "I am drunk!"
A few minutes later her face is bright red and she wants to leave, so with an "ok, let's go" we get up with the intention of going home. This plan is quickly foiled when I hear the principal say, "Amelia, come here". He takes me over to the table that is full of 9th grade teachers and we toast again. Then he tells me that each teacher wants to toast with me individually and we are going to switch to white wine.
Now, Chinese white wine is not really "wine" as much as it is rubbing alcohol. Fortunately though, you drink white wine from these very small glasses that are approximately half a jigger. By the time we went around the table and each teacher toasted with me, I had approximately 10 of these. Needless to say I was getting very drunk, and it wasn't over yet. For some reason we started doing toasts where I would have one drink and the other teacher would have three...and then I would have two and they would have three. Luckily someone finally decided that we better stop before someone died, and it was time to go. From here my memories get very spotty: I know that we took a school bus back to the school and that I was trying to speak Chinese to everyone (God only knows how that went), I also remember being handed a bunch of little boxes while I was standing in the guardhouse (it turns out they were pieces of a kit to ward off mosquitoes), and I know that I was talking to people on instant messenger. The next thing I remember was my alarm clock.
My alarm went off at 7am and it hurt: my head was pounding and my stomach was very queasy. I hit snooze as many times as I could, but I had to teach a class at 9:05am, so I eventually had to get up. Now, I love Chinese food and even back in the States I ate a lot of Chinese and other Asian cuisine. But I have never, not one time, woken up with a hangover and wanted to eat Chinese food. Ever. And since my food options were the canteen downstairs or the moon cakes in the fridge, I opted for some cola before wobbling off to class.
I did survive the day without puking, I taught my three classes, and by the time lunch rolled around, the food was a welcome relief for my poor body.