On the night before our New Year's Eve debut performance, the Bu Bu Gao power trio had its first onstage rehearsal.
We'd been practicing for weeks, but never anywhere bigger than a classroom crowded with desks. Teacher Yang was concerned that our stage posture - bunched together tightly like the Supremes - would not go over well on a large stage. During our last practice sessions she'd worked our a new choreography plan, which bore a strange resemblance to an elaborate football maneuver played out in slow motion. She had a grand vision, but we were only going to have one chance to try it out.
The rehearsal was being held at the school's outdoor sports area, the same site as the next evening's performance. I had never been to this part of the campus before, and I was unprepared for how big it was. We had been told that 3000 people might attend, but this space could easily hold twice that number. Planted in the asphalt blacktop were 50 basketball backboards. At the far end, taking up the space of one basketball court alone, was what looked to me like the stage. But Teacher Wang was not convinced. "That can't be it," she complained, "it's too small!"
I don't know what she had in mind, but there was more than enough room for us. The bigger concern was that the organizers were still furiously making preparations, and not everything was ready. Despite having racks of amplifiers and towering speakers, there were only two microphones. This was kind of a problem because we had three singers. They assured us that they'd have mikes for each of us tomorrow, but for the time being, our stage act was supplemented by regular microphone handoffs, adding to the sense that we were executing a slow motion football play.
By New Year's Eve, the change was dramatic. The formerly bare stage had been decorated with hundreds of multicolored balloons and bright red banners. It was more spectacular than I would have ever imagined, and it really began to feel like we'd be part of a professional performance, whether or not we had any talent.
We were accompanied to the show by all of our classmates and teachers. The anticipation and the growing audience was adding to our tension. The only one of us who seemed completely relaxed was Xiang Jiang, the only woman in our class. She's about five or six years older than the other Vietnamese students (though still less than half my age!) and they think of her like a big sister. She treats them like her little brothers, which is not to say that they have a loving and respectful relationship; it's much more contentious than that.
Xiang Jiang doesn't really fit the model of the petite and willowy Indochinese woman, dressed in the traditional ao dai clothing. She's solidly built, and wears tight blue jeans and sweaters. When she's called to the blackboard for a quiz, waiting for the teacher's instructions, she cocks her hips and places a palm on one and a fist on the other, as if daring the teacher to try and trip her up. While she has as much attitude as any inner city truant, she's equally quick to break into a smile and joke about her own mistakes and misunderstandings.
She is also direct to the point of physical assault. When the student sitting next to her gets out of line, she'll slap him on the side of the head, or pull on his earlobe, like a country teacher disciplining an errant schoolboy. When she's really upset, she'll knock into him with so much force, I'm afraid he'll get whiplash. Sitting behind her is like having a front row seat on the Three Stooges. But all of the class seems to love her anyway, and there are never any hard feelings. Having her with us at the show made us all feel a lot more at home.
The evening was slow to start as the crowd gathered and the stage crew made last minute adjustments. The first act to go on was a choir of about 30 students, who spent more time filing on and off the stage and being introduced than they did singing. When they did sing, they did it so softly that, even with microphones, nobody heard them. Then there was a modern dance performance with two bare chested men and one woman wearing Tibetan clothing. (I couldn't resist imagining that in reverse.) Just before our act we watched an elaborate production featuring many clumsy girls in green tutus, and one boy dressed as a large white rabbit.
We were seeing everything from backstage. After a few sets of performers had come and gone, Xiang Jiang realized that there was a panel of judges in the front row of the audience and each act was getting a score. Her eyes lit up with surprise. I didn't catch all of her words, but I heard her say "A competition? You're singing in a competition?" This was followed by a lot of commotion and a few well placed pokes to her classmates' arms and ribs.
Finally it was our turn. As we made our way to the stage, Xiang Jiang offered each of us some last words of encouragement. (She was probably speaking Chinese, but it may as well have been Vietnamese for all that I understood.) The first in line was Tong Shaolong, the student from Laos. She shook his hand, and then mine, and finally the hand of Huang Jing Ping, her Vietnamese classmate. Then, as we passed her and climbed the stairs to the stage, she gave Huang Jing Ping a swift kick in the butt.
Onstage, Tong Shaolong had the most responsibility. He had to make the introductions, and, ever since our sissy classmate got kicked out of the group, he had twice as many lines to sing. But he speaks the best Chinese and he also has the best voice. He was clearly nervous, but I had no doubt that he would pull it off; especially because, from the minute we got on stage, we could do no wrong. When we called out with the standard Chinese stage greeting, equivalent to nothing more than "Hello everybody!" the crowd started cheering. We may as well have been Aerosmith yelling, "Hello Boston! Are you ready to rock!?!"
After Tong Shaolong sang his first line, the crowd went wild. Their enthusiasm caught him off guard and he stopped dead in his tracks, like someone turning a corner and finding himself facing a wild animal. It took him a moment to recover, and in that time, our singing fell behind the backup music. We were essentially performing karaoke without being able to pace ourselves to the on-screen words. Even worse, from our place on stage we could hardly hear the music, so we got badly out of sync. Nobody seemed to care.
Tong Shaolong may have had the most lines, but I had the good ones. Singing the last line of each verse, my lyrics were the ultimate in over-the-top emotions. For the first verse, I had to express the tragic sentiment, "I still feel afflicted" and in the next, I shouted out "My blood is hot and I'm doomed to burn!" It's situations like this that make you understand why most Americans resist singing karaoke until they are dead drunk.
The crowd was great; they cheered every time we finished a line. When we got to the chorus, they started clapping along, an amazing act of coordination and cooperation for a Chinese audience. But the best part was during the interlude between the two halves of the song, when Xiang Jiang raced up on stage with two female helpers, and the three of them presented each of us with a bouquet of flowers. This brought out more cheers from the crowd, and made me almost as proud as if she'd kicked me in the butt.
The show went on until 2 AM, but we left shortly after our act ended. The next day, people started telling me that we had won first prize, or more precisely, *a* first prize. The Chinese are famous for awarding multiple prizes of the same rank, and all I know is that we won first prize in our category, whatever that may be. It's possible that we won Best Performance By Foreign Students From Laos, Vietnam, and America. But that's an award I'd be happy to receive.
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