The big day arrived for our performances as Alice and the Queen of Hearts. Unfortunately I had to work on New Years' Eve (yes a Saturday, they had this weird Chinese arrangement for the holiday where we worked on Saturday and we get Tuesday off instead) but we were given an early mark at 4 since we all had a big night ahead of us. We took a taxi to the venue at about 6.30 as we had to get our hair and make up done. The taxi started taking us to a completely different part of town since we had agreed to whatever his response was to our initial instruction (since we didn't understand him). We turned around the other way and then all yelled at each other in our native tongues (always best in an argument, the other side gets the general drift). We eventually arrived.
The function we were characters at was for a Chinese property company. There ended up being people from lots of different place there so I guess it was a bit of a networking event. It was held at Bund 18, right on the river and with a great view of Pudong and all it's space age /Jetsons lights. On level 4 there they have a Creative Centre, and they had put up a whole set in there with different rooms and activities, all in Wonderland style. Besides Jane and I they also had a guy dressed up as the White Rabbit, and some soldiers with big cardboard cards for costumes. They had done an awesome job with the set, they had an area for croquet, which was where I was stationed, and a mad hatters tea party room (which was marked 'reserved' all night and which for some reason no one went into, a pity). The party itself was OK but they were being a bit tight with the alcohol so people weren't really all that drunk. It was quite cool counting down to midnight in Chinese, never done that before. I was thinking we might have to be in character, which is a bit out there with the Queen of Hearts who is fairly crazy, but we didn't really play our characters too much, I think it would have freaked everyone out a bit. At about 1 we left and when we were going down in the lift a lady in the lift gave us her card and said they were going to a party at her place. We jumped in a car with them and it turned out she was the curator of the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, so that was random, but cool. Jane was stoked since that's right up her alley, and it turned out this lady is also really into animation, which Jane absolutely loves. The party was at the Museum, I hadn't been there yet and have to go back to get a better look because it looked fantastic, the archietcture was great and they had some interesting animations playing on the walls. So we stayed there for a while and then left to move onto the next place, which for me turned out to be home, since we went outside and couldn't get a taxi to save ourselves. So we walked home. Then Jane went out again, and I went to sleep.
