I’ve found myself in the 1.perplexing position of wedding guest for 2.total strangers 3.several times in Taiwan and China – and if tales related by fellow 4.Middle Kingdom travellers are anything to go by, my experiences aren’t unusual.

I’d been in Taiwan a month and already I was 5.crashing my first wedding. It was in the 6.central mountain range where I came upon a 7.grassy valley filled with a 8.small crowd of 9.well-dressed people beneath a 10.dozen or so 11.bright red tents with 12.white plastic tables weighed down by dishes too numerous to count. I parked my motorcycle to spy and enjoy the fragrance discreetly
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Seconds later, a man wearing a tuxedo and flip-flops waved a 13.downturned palm at me and shouted something. His 14.tone was friendly, and my week of Mandarin 101 was enough to clue me in to the meaning of the hand wave, scram in the west but come here in the east.

1.Drunk and happy, the man seemed to have something to tell me. All eyes were on me as he dragged me to a table set lavishly with 2.Styrofoam bowls, 3.paper napkins, and a 4.football field of 5.multicolored sashimi strips, 6.mountains of shrimp, 7.endless crab, and 8.massive Pacific lobster (all tail and no claws). Smiling people piled food on my plate and someone poured me a drink. Moments later, the first man returned, dragging a second in cummerbund and flip-flops.

‘Welcome to you,’ the 9.second man said in 10.broken, drunken English. ‘Very lucky! Very, very lucky!’

Disengaging myself from a 11.chopstick-full of lobster tail I stood and thanked the man, and agreed that I was indeed very 12.lucky to have stumbled upon such a feast.

His smile was 13.wide, all mouth and eyes.

‘No…my meaning is that we are lucky. For Chinese wedding…you coming means baby will come soon.’

The man, I found out later, was the groom. And my 14.accidental arrival, according to tradition, portended 15.speedy conception.

This was to be the 1.first of several 2.lucky 3.wedding crashing experiences. At a 4.Ming-themed ceremony in Guangxi province the bride, wearing 5.traditional dress, arrived riding a donkey side-saddle, while behind her a second donkey carried a 6.teakwood chest filled with treasures for the groom’s family. They fed me noodles, symbolising 7.long life, and welcomed me as a 8.long lost friend.

A few years later while researching for Lonely Planet in Yunnan I stumbled onto the 9.traditional nuptial ceremony of a 10.Dai minority couple. The groom’s party had, according to tradition, gone off to the bride’s village to ‘kidnap’ the bride, but the couple were delayed by road conditions and by the time they arrived to commence the ceremony everyone was very 11.drunk on rice liquor.

By the time the groom arrived, bearing the bride on his back, only a 12.handful of guests still possessed the hand-eye coordination to throw buckets of water on them (as is tribal custom). The 13.Dai nuptial ceremony involves downing of shots between chanting of vows, and soon both bride and groom were 14.drunk and 15.legally wed.

Some time after the ceremony the groom’s father thanked me for coming and told me that my 16.unexpected arrival was auspicious for the same reasons as it had been back in Taiwan. He also said that because they were members of an 17.indigenous group, the new couple weren’t bound by the country’s 18.rigid one-child policy and suggested that if I ever showed up at another wedding I should double the couple’s luck and bring a date.