Coupons, old cats and that 80s party

I was invited to a themed party last weekend and the prerequisites for attending were: you must have lived through the 80s, (which disqualified those still in liquid state then) and you must wear 80s clothes.

Since the earliest piece of clothing I have was made in 1993, I could only put on a sweater that looked 80s style. I lit a fire under it, and found it was neither cotton nor wool. Must be acrylic, which was appropriate.

The host lives very far away, outside Beijing. After I got on the airport expressway, it felt like I was taking a two-hour flight and then I spent another hour on bus before arriving. The couplet on the door read: Farewell to the crazy dog with love songs of old, Greeting to the lazy hog with amour of new. The horizontal scroll said: Remember the 1980s.

I was thinking: My waist was 1.8 chi (60 centimeters), now it's 2.5 (83 cm); I weighed 97 jin (48.5 kilograms), now 130 (65 kg); I had 200 hairs on every square centimeter of my head, now maybe 100; I was a virgin, now Well, my face looked like a 5-million-pixel photo, now it's probably 300,000 pixels. I'm getting old.

As soon as I stepped in the door, the hostess handed me a package that contained all kinds of ration coupons. The 80s saw the end of the shortage-induced rationing of every possible item. So, for one night, we had to use coupons for everything.

The task of collecting the ration coupons fell on the shoulder of Old Cat, a senior editor of a local newspaper. A few years ago, one of his colleagues asked me to contribute, and I turned in a satirical piece on cats.

When it was published, the same article had bizarrely morphed into a praise of cats. "Didn't you know my boss is Old Cat?" my friend chided. See, I jumped right on to the claws of a cat.

That night, Old Cat guarded the food with a strong sense of responsibility. Half way through the evening, the hostess announced that China had started reform and opening up, and the age of rationing was gone for good. All coupons became waste paper, but the food plates on the table were almost empty.

Then came the raffle. But it had a twist: The prizes were not objects people desired, but those people wanted to dispose of because they took up precious space. For example, a book of essays that nobody wanted to read. After that was the award presentation for best dressed and worst dressed. I was unfortunate to get the latter.

No matter how I explained, they wouldn't believe it was an acrylic sweater. In the end, I had to take it off and show it gave off static sparks. I know, you guys wanted to see the color of my underwear. Why make it so tortuous?

For the singing part, we all knew the songs, but had forgotten some of the lyrics.

As the music swelled, some would start from the second stanza and some the third, nobody would sing the first.

Memory is just like this blurry most of the time. Nostalgia is for play acting. If you are truly thrown back into a bygone era, you wouldn't be able to stand it.

(China Daily 02/01/2007 page20)