An Exercise in Losing Face

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone!! Look at the moon! Ahhhh, pretty moon.

And Happy Jenny-Took-Her-First-Classically-Humiliating-Tumble-in-Hong-Kong Day! More on that in a bit.

So Mid-Autumn Festival is this really lovely holiday where you carry around a lot of lights and lanterns, gaze adoringly at the moon, sit around in groups with candles, and eat mooncakes, one of the most famous (and most debatably tasty) desserts in Hong Kong. The typical mooncake has some sort of intricate design on top of the cake, and it is filled with white lotus root paste and an egg - the flatmates and I decided to go for a more modern route with our mooncakes, though, and opted for the Snowy mooncakes (mango, green bean, and tiramisu flavored) and Haagen Dazs mooncakes. The history of the cake is something like long ago, when bad people were coming to steal the glory of China, brave Chinese soldiers found a way to communicate surreptitiously by placing written messages inside of mooncakes, and we celebrate this clever move every year with the consumption of 1000+ calorie mooncakes. Sounds like a holiday to me!

Our Haagen Dazs mooncakes - yum!!

So as you can imagine, with the Haagen Dazs mooncakes, the evening got off to a very nice start. Ally and I then ventured down the mountain and made our way to Tsim Sha Tsui, one of my most favorite areas of Hong Kong (the best Harbour view in the city), which was having a large lantern and light display. It was also a gathering point for people to come together, light candles, run around with lanterns, and look at the moon. We walked around for a while, taking pictures of all of the sights, enjoying the peaceful merriment that was taking place around us.

Much to my delight, we run across a band of musicians playing awesome Mandarin songs while a number of people in the crowd either danced or sang along. It made me really happy, as it reminded me of the street bands in New Orleans that I loved so much last year. I was particularly excited when a bunch of people started doing what looked like a Chinese form of line dancing. I immediately pulled out my camera and took a clip of it so I could bring it home and share it with all of you. Check out this action:

Well, I wish that the story could just end here, with me enjoying the jovial sight and then having a nice, uneventful rest of the night looking at the moon. But of course, it did not.

While watching the musical scene, I was laughing and clapping along with everyone else, which one of the ladies who was dancing took to mean that I wanted to join in. She came over over and said something to me in Mandarin, followed by "Dancing?? You come!" I smiled and told her no thanks, I just wanted to watch. After a few times repeating this, I just shook my head so she would get the message. I was sure that if I made a foray onto the dance floor, as the only non-Chinese person out there, I would make some sort of horrific mistake or cultural misstep and embarrass myself as well as everyone there. I figured there would be some sort of calamity, and then I would go from that funny American who was appreciating and engaging in the culture to that horrid American who made a fool of herself and disrespects Chinese traditions. But then, after listening to a few more songs and watching the lovely, uninhibited dancing of the crowd, I figured, you know what, I'm probably just being too self-conscious and I should just embrace the experience, embrace the culture, and not worry so much. "Just say yes!" kept ringing through my head. So when the lady once again invited me to dance, I threw caution to the wind, handed my bags over to Ally and joined her for the next song, a fun, uptempo number that brought out a good group of dancers and attracted some new folks to the crowd.

At first, it was great - we were twirling around, bopping up and down, having a great time. My dancing was absolutely wretched, but I didn't really care, the people in the crowd didn't seem to be judging me too harshly. We kept spinning each other around a lot - I was pulling in some old moves from swing dancing and each time, we both giggled and then kept bopping. Well, about 2/3 through the song, I was in mid-turn, in about my 12th twirl, when SPLAT!! My sandal lost all traction and I fell smack down onto the pavement, wiping out for the whole crowd to see. I heard a gasp from the people around me, but I got up quickly and laughed as loud as I could and continued dancing, just to show everyone that I was ok. I was trying not to "lose face" (aka absolutely humiliate myself) - but the damage was already done.

The lady and I kept dancing, but when we went in for the next spin, an older lady in the crowd started loudly chastising my dance partner for twirling me, thinking I had fallen because I was dizzy. People were now looking at me like, "What the hell are you doing out there?" I kept smiling and laughing to try and allay and awkwardness, but as soon as the song was over, I understood why people had seemed concerned: my knee, which had taken the brunt of the fall, was BLACK and RED, with a sizable bruise having already formed on the spot where I had hit the pavement and a nice big scrape that was oozing blood. Ally immediately started shuffling around in her purse to get Band-Aids, and one nice boy in the crowd rushed over to offer additional bandages. We stepped back a bit, away from the crowd, so I could properly examine the damage and apply the Band-Aids, but when I looked up, I saw that a number of the people in the crowd were no longer watching the dancing but were now STARING at me trying to fix my bloody and banged-up knee. I threw them my winning-est smile possible and gave them the thumbs-up to indicate that I was ok, the show's over, etc. and they then, to my relief, laughed and smiled, returned the thumbs-up, and turned their attention back to the music. I then limped off with Ally, finally realizing just how much my knee was hurting. Did I mention that this was my already-messed-up left knee? I'm just glad I did not do more damage to it, or else I would have been the American who ruined Mid-Autumn Festival when an ambulance had to come pick her up and ruin all of the festivities... Luckily, I think the worst damage of the evening was confined to my pride.

So I've managed my first adequate dose of humiliation in Hong Kong, with quite a crowd of witnesses to boot. I think I played the part of the foolish American quite well this evening - hopefully I haven't permanently damaged these people's views of my country with my terrible dancing and clumsy moves, but oh well, I guess that's one of the risks of living abroad! All in all, it was a pretty great evening - Mid-Autumn Festival was fantastic, and now I'll have scars/souvenirs with which to treasure the memories. I'll be posting more pictures from this evening, as well as some from the past month, on Facebook later in the week, and Mom, I'll send you pictures of the gnarliness that is my knee.