Brothers meet here

Author: Li Hui
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2000-01-01
Features: Li Hui was born in Su County, Hubei (now Suzhou City) in 1956. In 1982, he graduated from the Chinese Department of Fudan University in Shanghai; in 1982, he worked as an arts journalist and literary column editor at Beijing Evening News in Beijing; since November 1987, he has served as a literary column editor at the People's Daily. He mainly writes biographies and essays. His major works include "Tragedy in the Literary World -- The Story of the Hu Feng Group's Wrongful Case," "Climbing Through Turbulent Times," and "Li Hui's Collected Works (5 volumes)," etc. In 1998, his essay collection "White Mist of Autumn" won the first Lu Xun Literature Prize. In 1992, he was invited to lecture at Stockholm University in Sweden and Copenhagen University in Denmark; in 1997, he was invited to lecture at Hitotsubashi University and the University of Tokyo in Japan; in 1998, he was invited back to Sweden by the Swedish Academy. In addition to writing, he also engages in book editing. His important series of edited books include: "Golden Rose Essay Series" (20 volumes) for Beijing Overseas Chinese Publishing House; "Phoenix Classics" (24 volumes) for Shanghai Far East Publishing House (co-edited with Chen Sihe); "Climbing Through Turbulent Times" series for Henan People's Publishing House (over 20 volumes published); "Historical Memo Series" (6 volumes) for Yangtze River Literature and Art Publishing House; and "Dolphin Strolling Series" (8 volumes) for Elephant Publishing House.
Excerpt: Before the long and noisy wedding night in Sweden, before arriving in Link?ping, P?r told me over the phone that on the afternoon of my arrival in Link?ping, he would attend a party to celebrate a friend's wedding and asked if I would like to join. I readily agreed. Naturally, I didn't want to miss this opportunity to get to know young Swedes and understand their culture. I had heard about Sweden's wedding customs from Beijing. A friend of mine from the Swedish bank's Beijing office married a Chinese girl last year. According to Swedish customs, before the wedding, the friends of both the groom and the bride must take them out into the streets on weekends and force them to do some mischief to show that they are officially leaving their single lives behind. So one night, he was dressed in a Chinese military-style jacket, with paper strips stuck on his body and face, and wearing a small number he liked. After getting drunk, his Swedish colleagues took him to Beijing Railway Station Square and made him play and sing until late at night. That wedding party, because I was on a business trip, I couldn't attend, but I later heard about it from him. My Swedish friend said this custom is very popular in Sweden and the Nordic countries. After resting slightly at P?r's house, I went with him to the city center, where his friends' mischief would begin. P?r works at the aircraft manufacturing department of the famous Swedish company SAAB. The groom and his friends who came to the wedding party were mostly his colleagues. Following P?r, I went to the groom's house with his seven or eight companions and took the groom to the city center square. The groom was very tall, nearly 1.9 meters, and strong and sturdy. According to custom, he should be dressed in a strange and unusual outfit. So, next to a phone booth, his friends changed his clothes in the street. He wore a plaid suit with extremely short and thin sleeves and very short pants, which were said to be in style in the 1970s. His shoes were also half-high heels, which were already outdated. P?r told me that this outfit would definitely attract people's curiosity on the street. After changing his clothes, they painted his face. The groom was from Finland, so his cheeks were painted with the blue and white pattern of the Finnish flag. Then, a large paper sign was hung around his chest, similar to the style used during the Cultural Revolution in China for public criticism. Since he worked at an aircraft manufacturing company, the sign was pasted with a photo of an aircraft made by SAAB, and the words "Made in Sweden" were deliberately changed to "Made in Finland." A large white cloth was also draped over his back, painted with the Finnish flag. After this elaborate dressing, the groom appeared in front of the passersby. He was surrounded to the entrance of a store at the square and was handed a large stack of copies of aircraft models. His task was to distribute them to the pedestrians. Amidst the cheers of his friends, he willingly but helplessly begged the pedestrians passing by him to take copies of the models, while also acting like a salesman and saying, "This is the best aircraft in the world, welcome to buy." Right next to the wedding party where P?r was having fun, another group of people were also having a lively wedding party. This was a wedding for the bride. The bride wore a long white veil and a checkered apron around her waist, with a white paper sign hanging on her chest, written in colorful ink: "I’MAKACK." I asked several people, but no one could tell me what "KACK" meant. After the bride danced in the street, she and her friends set up a table next to the store exit, lit a gas stove (perhaps), and arranged cutting boards and convenient utensils. I watched curiously, wondering what kind of mischief they would come up with next. I saw a girl carrying a plastic bucket, which was filled with eggs and different jams. The bride had everything ready and lit the fire, making Swedish-style egg pancakes on the street. Her task was to make these egg pancakes and sell them. Meanwhile, the groom was still busy distributing the advertisements. As these two unrelated wedding parties were bustling at the same exit, I saw another group of girls cheerfully surrounding a girl on the other side of the square. Of course, it was another wedding party. I wondered why there were so many wedding parties today. P?r said that first, it was the weekend, and second, in Sweden, the real spring doesn't begin until early May, when the weather is warm and sunny. That's why young people usually arrange wedding parties at this time. The groom had almost finished distributing the advertisements, and we drove to a racing track in the suburbs of Link?ping. This was a small racing track for entertainment, but the speed was quite fast in my opinion. They were all skilled drivers in their daily lives, but P?r, who had never driven this type of small racing car, also stalled a few times at the beginning. Some people even flipped over due to the speed and ended up with bruises on their faces. I was even more clumsy, constantly stalling, and eventually gave up halfway because I was too afraid of the speed. The track management had to bring the racing car back from a distance, while I walked through the grass between the tracks back to the starting point. They were driving very fast. In this setting, making jokes about the groom was still P?r's task. So, they took the opportunity to overtake the groom and tried to push him off the road. Fortunately, the groom was an excellent driver, dodging left and right, and finally managed to avoid being pushed off the road. Instead, two others fell onto the grass outside the track, scraping their hands and faces. As the sky darkened, the group of people who had fully vented their energy at the racing track returned to the city and entered a bar, where they began drinking endlessly. Sweden bans general bars from selling hard liquor, and beer is divided into three grades. Even the third-grade beer is not available for casual drinking. That day, it was the weekend and a wedding party, so they ordered the third-grade beer. In the bar, everyone sat together, and each person was responsible for buying their own share. Like in China, the main purpose of everyone was to find excuses to make the groom drink more. After sitting in one bar for less than an hour, they went to another bar. They went to and fro between four or five bars. They didn't eat any snacks, just drank endlessly. The groom was also quite drunk. It was already 10 p.m., and I had beened for about six hours. I thought the wedding party was probably over. I asked P?r if it was almost over, but he replied that the real highlight of the wedding party was yet to come. The drinking they had done so far was just the beginning. He said, "We're going to a football field first, where there will be some interesting activities." With the influence of alcohol, everyone surrounded the groom and walked to the football field in the city center. When I arrived, I found three people there who had already made preparations, as they had come from the bar early. They were all burly young men, but they were dressed completely differently now. Each of them wore a colorful headscarf, and one of them was wearing a white skirt. What was surprising was that they all had something stuffed in their chests, making it look like they had breasts. They were the official hosts of the wedding party and the directors of the mischief. First, one host held a wooden tray with over ten cups of beer and distributed them to everyone. Then, he made a speech, congratulating the groom on his upcoming marriage. After everyone drank, they made the groom drink. He had to drink the beer in a can completely, without a drop left, and he couldn't use his hands to help, only his mouth to bite the can. The groom failed the first time. Although he drank it all, the host shook a few drops out of the can. The groom had no choice but to drink again. On the second try, he finally passed. Next, they arranged a "T" shape with beer cans in front of the groom. First, they blindfolded the groom with a cloth, spun him around a few times, and then let him go. He had to walk through the gaps between the beer cans without touching or stepping on any of them. He failed several times. On the last attempt, he clearly stepped in the right direction, carefully extending his foot, and everyone pretended to be surprised. When his foot landed without a sound, he felt satisfied, and everyone deliberately cheered. It wasn't until he confidently believed he had succeeded that everyone burst into laughter. When he took off the blindfold, he discovered he had been tricked. The next item was also an interesting and cruel ritual. The host took out over ten bicycle inner tubes and tied them together to form a long rope. One end was tied to the goalpost, and the other end was tied around the groom's waist. One of the hosts lay down about thirty meters away from the goalpost, legs crossed, facing it. Another host explained.，after the wedding, the groom would be bound, making it difficult to find mistresses, and he would have to make great efforts to achieve this. The rope symbolized the constraints, and the person lying there was the groom's "mistress" after the wedding. The groom had to run from the goalpost to the "mistress" and touch her body to succeed. The groom took a few steps back from the goalpost. He needed to move quickly to stretch the rope enough to reach the "mistress." As he prepared to run, the host playing the "mistress" seductively touched his "breasts" and waited. The groom ran forward with all his strength, and the rope gradually straightened behind him. When he was almost about to touch the "mistress's" feet, the rope pulled him back, and he stumbled and rolled on the ground, looking quite pathetic. Already drunk, he became even more disoriented. Everyone else, however, was having a great time. Watching him like this, I was amazed at the intensity of their wedding party. Although P?r had been living with his girlfriend for a while, he had never had a wedding ceremony. He once told me that he might have one this year. At that moment, I asked him if he would also have to endure the same torment. He said he certainly would and that he was a bit scared. The groom finally managed to break free from the rope and find the "mistress" on the second try. After touching the "mistress," he was pulled back by the rope again, and he rolled around on the field once more. The torment finally ended. The hosts changed into different outfits, and I realized they had been wearing balloons to simulate breasts. Looking at the clock, it was already past 11 p.m. After the wedding party's torment ended, we left the football field and went to the home of one of the hosts. After drinking so much beer, we finally started eating, but it was very simple—just hot dogs. However, the place where we ate was not in his restaurant but in the bathroom on the first floor of the apartment. Everyone wanted to eat while taking a sauna. The Swedish young men, exhausted from the wedding party, were completely relaxed. They ate naked, continued to joke with the groom, and even sang folk songs naked. One of the young men who came to the wedding party took out a stack of songbooks and asked everyone to buy them for 10 kronor each. The songbooks were small, about the size of a 64-page book, probably with only 20-30 pages, with a yellow cover and no formal publication. It seemed to be printed on a computer. I picked one up and flipped through it. The first half of the songbook was in Swedish, and the second half was in English. It was actually lewd folk songs popular in Sweden, similar to some vulgar ditty in rural China, even more so. They each took a songbook, and for a moment, the entire sauna room, the bathroom, and even outside were filled with the loud singing of these strong men. It seemed they all knew the songs. Later, I asked P?r, and he said that these folk songs were known by almost all Swedish men, but only in very limited settings, such as in the sauna. It was already past 2 a.m. These young men, having eaten, drunk, and saunaed comfortably, did not stop there. They took the tickets they had bought earlier and went to the disco. There, if they wanted, they could stay up until dawn. The groom was finally quite drunk. However, he was an exceptionally strong young man, and despite being tormented all night, he was still full of energy. Walking on the street, he took advantage of his drunkenness and jumped onto small cars parked on the roadside one after another, from the front to the roof and then to the back. His burly body made the beautiful cars squeak as he swayed like a drunkard. In such a very calm and stable society as Sweden, such behavior was perhaps rare. I thought that every weekend, people like him and other drunks would bring some disturbance to the quiet night and leave some traces. It seems that a society that is too peaceful will always have some restless elements that keep it in balance. The disco was bustling with people dancing and more drinking. P?r's friends, except for a couple who were dancing, were drinking beer again. After nearly ten hours of the wedding party, it was coming to an end amidst the music and the smell of alcohol. I, along with others, was leaning on the sofa, dozing off, but still holding a beer cup in my hand. For me, during my month-long visit to Sweden, this was the most exhausting and long night, but also the most interesting and enriching one. Throughout the visit, this wedding party was a rare life experience that allowed me to directly participate as both a guest and a participant in the lives of young Swedes, giving me a perspective that I couldn't get from the streets.