I was invited to TEDx in Suzhou today which was am event that I’d wanted to go to before.  A young friend that I met a few weeks ago whilst helping her and her friends with a documentary they were making for university.She is one of the organisers of TEDx . I had a great seat and I even had a translation headset because not all the speeches were in English. 
It opens with a performance by the Suzhou Youth Orchestra which was very good, although I can’t remember the piece they played. When the second piece starts two male dancers come in stage and perform some contemporary dance which no one I spoke to had any idea what it was all about.  It looked like two gay guys prancing about the stage, maybe china is becoming more open and tolerant.

We had 12 speakers and it was hard to enjoy the Chinese speeches to be honest. This was partly due to the translators that were not very good. One girl was struggling to translate one of the speakers because he was talking too fast. I know it must be a difficult thing to do and I’m not blaming her in any way.  But to be honest what is more difficult is to listen to the way many of the Chinese spoke. They shout and do not talk in a normal voice, but then again many Chinese in everyday life do the same. This makes it very hard to enjoy and then with the bad translation to boot I was wishing I’d brought my ear plugs.
The English-speaking speakers talk in a more ambient way which makes for easy listening. Now of course you may say,”Well you can only understand English or your biased and that’s why you say this” Well it may be but it’s also cultural differences at play. There were two speeches by an old Chinese woman and a young Chinese guy and both speeches were great,  this was because of the content, the translation and the delivery. It was easy to enjoy because it felt more natural and they were not shouting. 

After the speeches we all headed to the Novatel Hotel for a buffet meal which was absolutely marvelous and it was great to eat nice western style food and I finished it off with ice cream and it was delicious.