Welcoming The New Year with Hats and Rats

It's that time again, Chinese New Year. Leaving the year of the Pig and entering the year of the Rat means it's Company Annual Party time! During the previous 2 annual company parties, I've been made to do embarrassing things, like sing impromptu accapella in front of hundreds of employees or participate in games that I don't quite understand but that the Chinese seem to find hilarious. This year was no different, as our HR team made each department do some kind of performance. My marketing team (above) chose to reinact a joke onstage. The joke seemed to be on me, as I was forced to dress up as a traditional bachelor and had the most mandarin lines of the entire group.

Initially, the theme was going to be 'Roll Into the New Year' and everyone was to 'roll' into the ballroom. I'm not quite sure who came up with that idea, but it was fortunately changed to 'Hats'. I'm wearing a parrot on my head to go along with our skit, and the engineering guy next to me was creative enough to make a Rat Hat out of paper maiche, while Grace our HR director, channeled 'Pirates of the Carribean'.

One of the most entertaining things I've noticed in China is how much people love to sing. They sing all the time, walking down the street, at their desks, in the bathroom, pretty much anywhere's fair game. The kicker is they don't care if it sounds good or not. According to one of the girls on my team, she said singing makes people happy, so they love to do it even if they have terrible voices. As I mentioned before, performances were required from each department, and there was A LOT of singing. While some voices were great, a lot of them resembled bad American Idol auditions.
Dancing was also popular, and departments practiced for months with professional instructors. HR did a beautiful waltz.....

And some groups combine the singing and dancing. In order to fully focus on both, they actually tape their vocal part before the performance, and then play their voices over the speaker system so they lip synch to themselves while they dance. the funny thing is, a lot of them don't even bother to do the lipsynching part, but just dance along to their pre-recorded voices without moving their mouths.
The HR team took the performance seriously and spent a lot of time and money on their costumes....

They even taped on their shoes!
More hats....

All in all, it was another great annual party. Now Zach and I are off to Vietnam to really celebrate the Year of the Rat! Happy Chinese New Year! Xin Nian Kuai Le!