On lauriats and weddings

Over the past 23 years (not counting maybe the first 2) of my life, I have attended the traditional chinese weddings with the bad music, the mandarin-speaking host, and the over-invited guests with a bunch of empty tables in between.

Usually, the meal/12 person table would consist of a number of food dishes appearing after every n intervals starting from the appetizer, some 6 other random foodstuffs that would always include steamed fish, pigeon and crab, soup, and dessert. Not necessarily in that order.

This is what you call in fookien, the pan-to. Simply put, the Lauriat. The whole smorgasbord that should be fun to eat, but you should also mind your manners, as this is not a buffet, no second dish of the same type will be laid before you and there are other hungry people at the table.

In a world of Chinese culture, sometimes manners are really forgotten, I think of myself back in Shanghai 2 years ago. A bunch of rowdy loud Chinese people at the next table were in states of drunk and disorderly, smoking, drinking, and spitting. It was a sight to behold, and made me want to drain all my Chinese roots away.

Filipino-Chinese aren't even close. Which is good IMHO, but I guess some habits do stay, not in those forms but in some aspects.

Oldies generally are the most pasaway of our kind (anybody who's nearest to the GI population are more often the deviants). In an all-out formal event, they would be the deviants in slacks and a dress shirt that doesn't even quite fit the standards of an ordinary work shirt or a hideous matching blouse and skirt / blouse and slacks attire.

Don't even get me started on the people wearing jeans. I would have them thrown out of my own wedding.

Moving on to the actual wedding is how some people go all PG (patay-gutom) during the food. A dish in the lauriat is mainly good for 12. So lucky you if you get seated with only 10 persons with leaves you 1/10 chance in getting the last 2 steam prawns/dried scallop wrapped in radish or something like that. Well courtesy is always given to those who seem to be in higher status on your table, which means everybody older than you are or the kids who doesn't seem to know the value of courtesy as of yet, or are too spoiled for their own good.

I remember when I was young and I was whining about getting another steamed prawn, Mom would give me this huge long lecture about not being selfish. I stopped being a priss at wedding events and let everyone grab a hold of the last tasty morsel of food x. It's fun to see them push the table around in feigned respectable gestures about who wants to eat first and whatnot. :) which I was quietly observing through my muted Ipod and my headphones as decoy to make sure I look like some emo college kid dragged by her mom to the wedding.

So there was the Pg crew, who seem to have forgotten that there were 8 other people and got most of the cold-cuts, half the steamed grouper fish and got first dibs on the first of the two remaining prawns. They were cracking the steamed crabs as if they were at home, banging it with a spoon since the establishment ran out of crab crackers, making the crab shell fly towards my mom, who was not particularly happy having shells splatter her dress. I didn't even bother getting seconds of the ube buchi and sacrificed it to the PG crew and whiny english-speaking kiddie. Man was I ever the grown-up. I just stuck to eating the hot red beet soup that was catered for old people. But not people as young as I am! Haha. For those occasions mom would poke my leg everytime Pg couple would act all Pg, and I would be all nonchalant but I'd feel this little humor bubble growing into a giggle.

Anyway, we ended the event with mom overhearing them asking for a doggy bag to wrap up some of the goods from the table (maybe the orange centerpiece?) and me snickering as we went down the escalator and I was telling mom that I have never seen a hungrier table than ours.

She totally agreed.