Fact: dinner + clients = hangover

Last night I went out to an impromptu dinner after work with the Director of Sales and the CEO of the Chinese branch of MOX, the company that I'm working for over here.  It sounds strange when I say it out loud (or type it, as the case is here obviously), as I would never interact with that level of management in my own company back in Australia.  But over here, I'm the foreign expert that everyone loves...or at least, wants to show off to customers.  So when a client is in town that has bought (or is thinking about buying) the software that I help to write, I'm inevitably invited along to a dinner during the week to interact with them on a social level.

I have no problems with this whatsoever - the dinners are usually great fun, and it gives me a chance to practise my (extremely limited) Chinese in a social setting.  Last night's dinner was no exception.  We were located in a great spot, on the top floor of the Super Brand Mall which is right on the bank of the Huangpu River in Pudong.  Actually, this dinner was a little different, as there were only 7 people at the dinner (normally there are 10 or more) and two of the attendees were old friends of the CEO (they all went to University together). 

This revelation was shared with me pretty early in the evening, and it of course meant that there was going to be a lot of drinking and reminiscing.  When the food was ordered, I was asked what I would like to drink, and immediately said 'pijou', which is Chinese for beer.  The rest of the guests at the dinner went with a fiery Chinese rice wine which is a lot more potent.  At this point, I was given a challenge by the CEO: 

"Andrew, we will all drink one bottle of wine each over dinner. This wine has more alcohol than the beer you are drinking.  That means you must drink five bottles of beer!" 

"Five bottles?" I said incredulously.  "How big are we talking?" 

The bottles were brought out and to my relief they were only 500ml.  However, in dinners like this the problem is not so much the alcohol content, but the sheer amount of liquid that you are consuming over a pretty short period.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, Chinese dinners are all about showing your respect to the other guests by toasting them.  This meant that I was in for a tough time, as I was drinking about 200ml of beer for every toast, while the other guys were only drinking about 50ml of wine.

Not being one to pass up a challenge, I entered proceedings with gusto and before I knew it had polished off a couple of bottles in quick succession.  The food arrived and was quite delicious (peanut based dishes are a fun challenge with chopsticks after you've had a few drinks).  One of the customers was from the Xiangtan Steel company, a city which I've been to before (twice) to help them fix some problems they were having.  We hadn't met on my previous visits, but we got along so well that he invited me to go along next weekend for the formal site acceptance testing process, and then offered to take me to see the birthplace of Chairman Mao, which is about an hour's drive away from the city.  I was also promised 'spicy food and spicy girls', as the Hunan province is famous for both.  So that should be interesting if it happens.

Anyway, after numerous rounds of toasting, I had finished my five bottles of beer...and the others still hadn't finished their wine.  So a sixth bottle was brought out for me to continue the toasting.  By the time the dinner had finished at 9pm, I had drunk 3 litres of beer...in the space of only 2 hours.  I was pretty tipsy by this stage, and ridiculously full of liquid.  Sometimes we'd head out to a karaoke place or continue drinking at a bar after a dinner, but the other attendees had flights to catch early the next morning, so we wrapped it up.  Which was probably a good idea, as I don't know how else I could have physically fit anything into my stomach.  I had a terrible night's sleep and woke up feeling extremely average.  Not the worst hangover I've ever had, but worse than I was expecting to feel on a Thursday!

If I end up going on the trip next weekend you'll be able to read all about it right here. Stay tuned.