Beijing has the most to celebrate, but its bashes are notoriously staid. The party faithful will meet at the Happy Valley racetrack, which easily turns to mud, because the colonial government snapped up all the better spots. David Copperfield and Luciano Pavarotti were too expensive for Beijing. Yo Yo Ma will play, but the bash may resemble a National Day celebration last week where the main action was the spectacle of some 3,000 business leaders trying to get near enough to a Chinese official to be photographed. With colonial Gov. Chris Patten looking on, Chinese official Zhou Nan urged the British not to cause ““further trouble.’’ ““Let us struggle vigorously for the smooth reunification,’’ he concluded. Party on, Zhou.
Socialites are taking up the slack. They’re trying to mix local, international and mainland Chinese, with a few celebrities thrown in. ““It’s not how big the party, it’s how big the face,’’ says party planner Vivian Chow. One hot ticket is the China Coast Changeover Classic, a weeklong series of black-tie affairs that will move from Beijing to Shanghai and end with a white-tie ball in Hong Kong. ““I want people to remember this moment in history as one where they partied all night,’’ says organizer Ted Marr. There’s even an anti-party party. ““The main ceremony will be very moving, but I think I’ll take a rest,’’ says David Tang, who runs the tony China Club. Members will dine on a veranda overlooking a former colonial cricket pitch. They may look back on the banquet as their last chance to openly shed a tear for the passing of an era.
