A 1920s Goodbye, How Much For That Chanel Bag?

13/5/2013

Saying goodbye to our friend Matt.

I don’t think I have ever been to a city as ‘migrant’ as Shanghai. In the last 12 months we’ve said goodbye to more people than in all our three years residing in China. Now it was the turn of Matt, our German buddy. He was up and leaving to go back home and he was marking the occasion with a charity event in honour of GAT – Global Alpha Training. It’s a worlwide Christian-based organisation helping local churches to set up Alpha courses, which are there to provide a platform for people to be introduced to the faith.

He had hired out the swanky 2nd floor of an art gallery by Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek area. His goodbye party was to be done in 1920s style in honour of one of Shanghai’s earlier boom periods. All proceeds from the ticketed event were to go towards the work that GAT does. OK, so Lezil and I don’t exactly own any vintage gear as such, but half the fun was digging around our closet and get to as close a look as possible to the period.

Lezil had various pre-event costume changes until she finally settled with an above-the-knee black number and matching shawl. I went for a pair of brash purple trousers, white shirt, bow tie and an off-white jacket to complete my transformation (oh, and not forgetting lashings of hair gel to slick my mop back!).

Lezil and I ready for our 1920s evening of fun!

The first band performing and out front, three ladies wearing a traditional 'Qipao'.

We had arrived over an hour late, but thankfully the first band (a local church based one) was just getting started. They all looked the part with band members in matching hats and the accompanying three lady dancers out front in traditional Chinese Qipaos. Canapés of meat and seafood varieties were regularly served by the waiting staff as people chi-chinged their wine glasses and posed for photos which would no doubt end up on some social media platform later.

The intro band completed their set and Matt was on stage to greet his attendees and formally kick off the evening.

Matt’s background is in the auto-industry but clearly his passion was with the music. Over the years spent in Shanghai, he had become well acquainted with a number of musicians, particularly within the city’s Jazz circuit. Tonight, he had called in the best of the best making it feel almost like an unofficial music festival, but with that exclusivity of only a couple of a hundred of people in the venue to witness such a musical feast.

First up was one of Cotton Club’s diamond performers – Denise. When she speaks, she has this irresistible low raspy edge to her voice. Transfer that one stage and boy, dynamite is the result.

With one of the performers of the night, Denise (USA), our good friend.

Denise bringing the house down with her performance.

She weaved her way through a couple of more folky/rock numbers before ending up with a good old foot stomping rendition of “Oh when the saints go marching in…”. She absolutely destroyed that stage (figuratively speaking!).

The evening followed with some stand-up comedy by Drew, from Kung Fu Komedy – mainland China’s first and only full time comedy club. The 15 minutes set touched on marriage (comparing it to playing Nintendo Super Mario) and observations of life in Shanghai (including a reference to various Sesame St characters and who they represent in real life). All in all, pretty funny stuff.

Matt surprised us all by jumping on the keyboard and singing a couple of songs. He had especially written a multi lingual goodbye song which was touching. The other main part of the evening was the auction which admittedly a lot of us never knew about beforehand. First out the block were a couple of ladies rings both retailing at around RMB 1,200 (£120) and went for pretty much the asking price. Already, these were out of our league. Talk about being unprepared.

And the price range just kept escalating finally reaching its pinnacle, to which I turned to Lezil and asked “How much for that Chanel bag?”. The limited edition accessory was retailed at RMB 80,000 (£8,000) and the starting bid at RMB 20,000 (£2,000). It became a real battle between two lady bidders with one eventually walking away with her prize at RMB 46,000 (£4,600). All I could say was, people in Shanghai still have money!

Matt saying goodbye in four languages...

Closing out the evening was singer/songwriter Redic. Branding his music as ‘eclectic soul’ – it was just that. His vocal performance was impressive and his band projected that energy further as he sang compositions from his forthcoming album. Being the end of the evening, everyone was in a dancing mood and it didn’t take long for the partygoers to flood the dance floor in front of the stage. Truly we had been treated to a brilliant evening of socialising, nibbles and top quality music. Maybe Matt might re-think his future after the success of this event.