Moktoberfest, with a side of Fatboy.
A joke for which the whole of this post is the punchline…Some
Chinese, a bunch of white westerners and a genuine German oompah band walked
into a mock beerhall constructed on top of a swimming pool a couple of
kilometres from communist China…
Everything about Macau’s casinos and the
hotels/entertainment industry attached to them is breathtakingly ridiculous.
You sometimes feel like you’ve stepped onto the set of a post-apocalyptic
movie, where the society that has emerged is obsesses with hyperconsumption and
hedonism. If you’ve not read my posts on our trip to Macau, I would (clearly!)
recommend them…
So we did have some idea what we might be experiencing when
we booked into the Sheraton Macau Oktoberfest party as a warm up to seeing Fatboy Slim live next door. And so, I was not
that surprised to see that they had constructed a mock-rustic wooden stage and
a faux beer hall, complete with sturdy stomp-proof long benches and tables, and
shipped in a 7-piece Bavarian band complete with four German ‘Beer wenches’.
What we were not prepared for was how hilarious this unlikely clash of cultures
would be.
Some quick caveats…the revelries of Oktoberfest beer parties
are unusual. There is no reason everyone should know how they work. Imagine a
ceilidh, but the dances are all based around staying at your tables, and
involve (benignly enforced) beer quaffing. The key is – everyone participates.
However, there is no reason mainland, HK and Macanese Chinese should know this;
and there were zero explanations or translations for them.
BUT. The band - its banter and silliness well-honed, their
musical skills excellent – and supporting wenches could have done no more to
get across that everyone needs to copy what they do, and join in. Until the very last hour, when the beer finally broke the
dam, the only table out of 900 people to dance, shout responses to the band,
raise glasses etc was our small enclave of 8…see video.
The baffled Chinese tucked with relish into the German food
on hand, and clapped politely when the songs ended. This caused us endless
merriment, and made us friends for life in the desperate beer wenches, who kept
joining our table when their efforts failed. Some particularly good lost in
translation moments:
-
Beer wenches jump on a table full of Chinese and
gesture them to copy. They respectfully back off to one end of the table,
thinking this is a show, not an invite to dance, and take photos.
-
Beer wenches approach another table, and its
inhabitants get up en masse, and flee.
-
In response to pleas for everyone to stand and
raise their glass when a certain word is shouted, the only table bar ours to
respond remains seated and raises their knives in unison, like some weird
salute.
-
A small Chinese lady joins our table, as it’s
close to the stage, to take photos; and when we all stand and start to dance as
one, she visibly flinches, clutching her camera to her chest, before
half-falling off the bench in an effort to get away.
On the flipside, we were hilarious to everyone else in the
room. As they had no reason to know how this was meant to work, they –
understandably – thought we were the
crazy ones. Openly pointing and belly laughing, small groups gathered to take
photos of us (from a safe distance).
You could fully understand why. We looked preposterous wiggling and shouting on
our own. Look at the crazy gweilos – why are they standing and swaying about like
that? All this stamping, shouting, jumping on benches…don’t they see how
embarrassing they are? Why aren’t they just watching the show like everyone
else? Must be drunk already, look at their huge beer glasses [few tables got
the 2-litre steins bars us]! And why is that one ripping up the table cloth? Oh
no, that one’s seen me watching and
is coming over gesturing for me to dance, quick run away!
And to cap off the surreality of the evening, we promptly
decamped to a huge club next door, and at around 2am found ourselves watching
Fatboy Slim live, from about 10 yards distant, with only marginally more people
than were at the Oktoberfest party…
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