The Royal Wedding

 In her second week here, Theresa went to one of the coffee "meet and greets" that the Suzhou Expats association holds every week.  She meeted and greeted and has since parlayed those first contacts into a growing network of companions.   As with us, they are here because one half of a married couple is employed by one or another of the Western companies that are located in Suzhou.  Some are American, some British, some Australian, some French.  But in China, the national differences are far less than the common bond of being an  English-speaking minority.

Most of her friends are old-timers compared to us.  This is a good thing.  For the most part, if you don't speak Chinese then the only way you learn anything is by word of mouth through your buddy network.  So the more expats one knows, and the more experienced those expats are, then the greater will be the shared knowledge.  Need to find a good doctor?  Cool Ranch Doritos?  Tilex Bathroom Cleaner?  Then put the question out to your network and wait for the answers to come back.

So anyway, a week ago Friday one of Theresa's buddy network - a lady from the UK - clued us in to a Royal Wedding Party in Old Suzhou.  The party was being hosted at an English Pub called the Drunken Chef.  The story goes that the owner of the pub - Clive - married a local woman years ago and has lived in Suzhou forever. He opened the pub to grace Suzhou with a small slice of his British homeland.  He serves traditional pub food and plays all the soccer matches and F1 races on the big screen TV.

Due to the magic of time zones, the Royal couple was scheduled to say "I do" at approximately 7:00 pm China time.  The timing could not be more perfect for a dinner party.  So Clive put the BBC International coverage on the big screen.  He also served up an all-you-can-eat food orgy complete with roast pork and Yorkshire pudding.  And as a nice touch, he held a contest for the woman sporting the best wedding hat and awarded a bottle of champagne (actually, Chinese sparkling wine) to the lucky winner. 

It was a great meal and a fun party.  But back to the whole word-of-mouth-buddy-network thing.  The Drunken Chef (Clive's eponymous pub) sits on the back side of a shopping center on a blind alley.  You would never find it by accident.  Heck, I could hardly find it on purpose.   The taxi driver got lost on the way.  The only way you could know the location of the Drunken Chef is because someone else took you there for your first time.  And someone else had to take that person there for their first time.  And so on, and so on, back to the beginning of time.

So that's why Theresa's buddy network is a good thing, if not an essential thing.  It's our tribe.  For all the modern world of the printing press and the internet and all that, our situation here is not too much different from stone age times.  All knowledge is tribal knowledge.  You learn from the elders of the tribe.   And when the elders expire (actually, their work permits and visas expire) then the next generation takes their place. And so on, and so on, until the end of time.