Guest Of Honor

Prior to leaving China, I had been feeling really appreciated by my Company, before I left they really made it known that they appreciated what I had done in China. On one of my last nights before leaving, I had the last of the 3 going away shin-digs, the last one being the night that the managers and partners of the firm took me out. While I have been a spectacle at the other annual dinners, mostly because I have typically been the only white person at the parties, I was basically the guest of honor at this dinner. Never having left a Company in China, I didn’t know that as the guest of honor at a going away dinner, everyone, individually, comes around to toast you. This means they individually get to perform a toast once during the night, the person being honored gets toasted by every single person. The idea of being toasted can range from a sip of alcohol to drinking down a shot for each toast. Being the foreigner, I guess the expectation is that I can really keep a lot of alcohol down, so mostly everyone was coming by expecting me to drink it down...and we were not drinking wine spritzers. I had to slow the toasts down a bunch of times so that I wouldn’t lose my faculties (to note, I held everything together the whole night despite all the toasts), but ultimately it was a very fun night.