Thanks to our friend Harvey to let me join “Spring Festival Celebration and International Friendship Ambassador Award Ceremony”, on Sunday 8 February in the Beijing International Hotel Convention Center. We had a great table and we chatted a lot.
The hotel is pretty big with many meeting rooms, some shops, artifacts and art displays, large atriums in several unexpected corners. Next to the hotel is the Convention Center, often used by the Beijing government. Looks overall pretty quiet.
The event was a bit too “Chinese” if I may say so, in a not-that-good way.
It started at 5:30 pm and we had first to go through the performances, speeches and award ceremony till we got food around 8:00 pm. Everybody was hungry. No beer, no wine. We suspect it was because there were many diplomats from Muslim countries. So far so good for mutual respect: why can’t we have a beer at least? Certainly not a budget problem as beer costs less than the soft drinks we were served. Some were not too convinced about the quality of the food but I found it reasonable.
There were several empty tables, a bit everywhere, that did not look good. The waiters would still pile up dishes while nobody was sitting there. Our table, not lacking initiative, went to collect those to add more on our table.
The event management and design team has a lot to improve. The (impressive) acrobat lady from Taiyuan was dressed in red with a red background: we could hardly see her. Music was playing loudly when it shouldn’t. And so on. I have seen other Chinese events amazingly well organized.
The awards all went to …, oh well I don’t know how to say that. But zero awards to EU, North America, Australia and alike. Looks like we are not on the Friendship list… On the other hand, I did not see anybody from Western embassies. Anyway I was happy to meet again the ambassadors of Benin, Senegal and Vietnam.
The “awards” ribbons had their English upside down… Another point was the “present” we got: a massive and heavy book. All calligraphy, not exactly something most foreigners are happy to carry … and keep…