too little, too late

So, in addition to my run in with a nasty case of the clap earlier this week, I've also been suffering from a huge bout of writers block since my last entry, an affliction which I'm trying to work my way through by just writing and seeing what comes up. So I'm hoping that like the healthy dose of tiger penis extract the Chinese doctors gave me for the STD I've contracted, this too will do the trick. Unfortunately, in the whirlwind that is my face-paced Beijing lifestyle, details of my past happenings have gotten somewhat lost in the fray since my last entry. I do sincerely apologize for the hiatus between entries. I don't mean to intentionally play with the strings of your heart and tear at the very fabric of your life, disrupting the carefully crafted daily routine you have built around hanging on each and every one of my words. So I'll try and make these entries less sporadic yet equally as entertaining in the future.

Two weekends ago Ping, Pat, Tucker, Sandro (a late round draft pick into our adventure) and I took an, as originally advertised, trip to Hangzhou, Shanghai and the Yellow Mountain, three must see stops in the Souther part of China. We decided to break out of the week early and took an overnight train on Wednesday afternoon, arriving in Hangzhou bright and early Thursday morning, ready to tackle the world like we were a professional linebacker. However, with no set itinerary and, upon leaving, no plan for getting home, we quickly dispatched with Plan A for the weekend and ended up resorting to Plan Epsilon by the end. I guess we shouldn't have had such high expectations given how our journey started.

We began the weekend on the wings of a good omen, sprinting through the streets of Beijing to catch our train, making it with just enough time to spare to buy 16 bottles of beer and 6 containers of instant noodles on the platform before the train boarded, cleaning out the beer caches of two separate, but equal, vendors. Of course, 16 bottles of beer would not last 5 people all the way on our 13 hour ride to Hangzhou, so, naturally, we had to enlist the help of our good friend Johnny Walker and his delicious Red Label concoction to keep us entertained for part of the trip. He's really an upstanding guy, and an absolute riot once you get to know him. After disembarking our midnight train going anywhere once we arrived in Hangzhou, we immediately de-robed. Unfortunately, it was not so much in the sexy Demi Moore in Striptease kind of way but rather, more in the we started sweating profusely kind of way, accentuating the already pungent funk we had been stewing in the entire train ride down since we had to run to catch our train in Beijing. Mmm... stale 13 hour old man-sweat. Were it not clocking in somewhere in the high 60s in Hangzhou, I wouldn't have welcomed the sweat like the people of East Germany welcomed legal copies of David Hasselhoff's music after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those bootlegs of "Looking for Freedom" really weren't cutting it anymore.

Our travels in Hangzhou didn't lead themselves to any stories that could be exaggerated into blog worthy tales. Shanghai, however, was another kettle of fish all together. However, in order to keep the mystery alive in the relationship between us I've built up in my head, I'm just going to limit myself to one story from the trip, partly because I need to keep you addicted to my blog like it's that crack you've been smoking, and giving you all you want is just poor business, partly because it's the only real story I have that isn't a "you had to be there" kind of thing.

Friday night, we ventured out to what must have been the greatest idea ever conceived since the invention of those condom vending machines they install in restaurant bathrooms: all you can eat, and more importantly drink, Japanese food for 150 kuai. I'm pretty sure between the 7 of us there we managed to collectively put away over 20 bottles of beer, and uncountably high number of bottles of sake, a whole cow, 1 medium sized eel, and at least a raw fish each. For the 24 hour after that, I burped nothing but the taste of sake and eel. Sometimes I still have flashbacks. After downing all this delicious gourmet Japanese food, we ventured to one of my favorite bars in the entire world, Bourbon Street. The club has grown in popularity since the last time I was there two years ago, with a slight dash of class following suit. However classy this place may have become, with their new menu of overpriced drinks and a distinct disdain for serving the plebeian Qingdao, they still haven't gotten rid of the clubs premier showcase, old white people dancing with, what I know to be from previous experience, young Chinese prostitutes. This almost dwarfs the live house band and go-go dancers as reason enough to patron this establishment. But back to the main story.

Let me set the stage for a minute. Three hot Filipino girls singing covers to some of America's hottest jams, including, but not limited to, Guns N' Roses, Madonna, AC/DC, Black Eyed Peas, and even a little Linkin Park, which surprisingly didn't make me want to shove forks in my ears to avoid having to hear it. The bands final set was approaching, however, virtually the entire club had cleared out. Before the last set started, as filler material, the club had one of the coolest live performances I've ever seen: a string trio playing live techno remixes of famous classical songs. Never in my life have I been so confused yet simultaneously impressed and elated since that time Bon Jovi filled in for Tybalt during my high school's rendition of Romeo and Juliet. So the band finally comes back for their last set and myself, Pat and Ping take it upon ourselves not only to request trashy song after trashy song, but also to sing our off-key hearts out and dance like absolute fools. Had we not been the only people on the dance floor, I'm pretty sure someone would have removed us for single handedly disgracing the institution of clubbing. Were that not bad enough, enter creepy drunk Chinese man, a man who may have been stranger than the guy the previous night who was air conducting an imaginary orchestra in front of the band, all the while sporting a red Ferrari sweater vest tucked deeply into his pants.

So we can all see this Chinese guy sort of milling about on the dance floor as the band rocks out with their proverbial cocks out on stage. At one point, he wanders up in front of me during one of the songs, looks me up and down, and then slaps my ass as he walks away. Obviously this was not kosher, but beyond that, he did it to Pat and Ping too. I mean, I have a problem being sexually accosted by random middle-aged Chinese men all together, but, seriously, to be so blatantly regarded as replaceable by the foreigner next to me still kind of hurts. I guess I didn't hurt so much after he tried to grab my nipple, cuz that's where I draw the line, mister. Eventually, after walking up to me and Will (a delightful British guy who joined the EducAsian kids in Shanghai) and trying to put his head in our respective crotches, I think he got the idea that we were not at all interested and moved along. Either that or he got bounced out by one of the many security guards at the club. Needless to say this was the first, but hopefully not last, time I got hit on by a middle-aged man in China. I think there's a Boy Scout Merit Badge for that.

So there you have it, my most entertaining story from Shanghai. I'll leave the tales of drinking wine on the 56th floor of the Jin Mao Tower in the bar of the Grand Hyatt, of the rampant offers of "sex massage" on Nanjing Road, or of our adventures with Noods for another day. If I don't get around to them, just remind me next time our paths cross. Remember to stand on my left side. That's the good ear, don't ya know.

fine textured hair...

assorted cakes and pastisseries

According to the calculations on my abacus, it's been over a week since my last post. For shame on me. In my own defense, other than reclaiming our title at Lush Pub Trivia last Wednesday, thanks to our ability to spoon feed the masses from the collective vat of useless knowledge we as a program posses, not much happened this week. I will say, however, that the road to victory was paved with unfortunate realizations at the disturbingly skewed facts we had to unearth. We learned a little more about each other that day. The weekend, the continued basis of all my entries, is worthy more of episodic prose rather than a continuous narrative. So forgive me for jumping around.

3-2-1 Contact: This week was Lush's "Rush Week," a special event put on by Lush every semester to welcome all of the wide-eyed, bright green foreign students to Beijing in an explosion of a week long celebration of drunken debauchery and cheap alcohol. The punctuating orgasm of this alcoholic hedonism is Zub's 3-2-1 party, which means 3 kuai shots of Tequila, 2 kuai shots of Vodka, and 1 kuai Test Tube shots (notes for those in America: 1 kuai = approx. $0.12. Me likey). At these prices, people were drinking like it was going out of style. there was no reason to be sober and so many reasons to get faced. Unfortunately, somewhere around my 11th or 15th Test Tube shot (I lost count about halfway through the 3rd go around), we realized that there was virtually no alcohol, replaced with an overabundance of sugar. So instead of getting drunk, we got a huge sugar high, and then crashed about an hour and a half later. But for that hour and a half, we lived like Gods... well... Gods who couldn't really do much or go anywhere because the place was so packed that even my usual club going activities of leering at women while touching myself inappropriately became impossible without having to push someone out of the way. And usually, people flee from the dude playing with himself in the club.

Saturday in the Park: After a long Saturday climbing up and down the irregular steps of the Great Wall, followed by a delicious dinner with mi Daddy, who's in town until tomorrow, we ventured out to what is purportedly the hot spot in Beijing, Mix. The club had these lusty red hues which came complete with scarlet curtains shading walls that were, of course, entirely mirrors. It created a club that looked like the illegitimate child of a drunken meeting between a bohemian palace and a genuine Euro-trash, Ibiza style techno joint. Enclosing a dance floor that sported a bona fide "shake what yo mama gave ya for all to see" stage in front of the DJ tables, were a bunch of smaller tables and lounge areas to sit and chat, which would have been possible had there not been people dancing literally in your lap while you're trying to get your conversate on. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had my suspicions about this place, because I hadn't heard or been to it (and we all know no club can be the spot until I have christened it with my presence), but they were quickly abandoned when I saw several Audi's, Mercedes' and BMW's parked outside the club, most with drivers inside waiting for their employers to emerge. I think I even saw a Porsche. Anyway, at a 50 kuai cover I was expecting something good. And given that it was St. Patrick's day, one of those well know Irish holidays so prevalently recognized in China, all I really wanted was some green beer for the novelty. I began the night with unfortunately unattained aspirations. I think the Irish in me wanted to get really drunk, drag the English in me out of the bar and beat the crap out of it. Which I was all for. Anyway, we finally got in Mix only to find that the club was absolutely packed, wall to wall, with very stylish and well coiffed Chinese people. I mean, I was ecstatic, because I had finally found where the attractive Chinese girls that I based my entire trip here upon go. But, once I realized that they wouldn't let me dance on the stage because I am the unfortunate owner of a Mr. Johnson Doll, my hopes of taking one or three of these girls home quickly faded. And let's get one thing straight, owners of Mix, dancing on top of things in front of a bunch of strangers is not only my best way of attracting unnecessary attention to myself, but also what I'm known for. That's my thing, and you can't take that away from me. So, like a poor Ukrainian farmer during the immigrant wave at the turn of the century, I was relegated to dancing with the rest of the steerage passengers on this trans-Atlantic club-going experience. I lost interest in the club after I realized that, at any given moment, the floor was so packed I could be mistaken for dancing with a guy. Inevitably, one of them would have his junk on me. I think the huge black guy with the white Kangol outside the club put it best when he said, "Yo, I need some room when I dance. I'm up in there trying to grab some booty." We didn't stay much longer after this.

Breaking and Entering: I almost forgot something of mild interest when we were at the Great Wall, so I'll slide it in here. After finally making it back down, by a different, less circuitous route up the mountain, we, somehow, ended up a tier below where the buses were parked. We, being the observant students we are, couldn't find any reasonable means for getting back up to the bus. Fearing that we'd be left behind as the hour of our departure drew near, we ended up having to scale an at least 45 degree incline and hopping up a 6 wall to get back to the parking lot... only to realize as we drove away that there was an entrance to the parking lot about 100 yards down the road from where we made our treacherous invasion. Somehow we're always the ones who end up doing things the hard way when there's a much easier, and usually more obvious way to do it that we have just somehow blown by. I guess it's a lot funnier when you consider that my 59 year old dad had to do this too, and did it with surprising ease. It makes me wonder what he got up to in his younger days...

Tango Fandango: After we left Mix, we ended up at this club called Tango, which had a few guest DJ's for the night. One of them, DJ Big Fatty (named by me because he was an absolute house) was spinning some updated versions of some old school classics, which made me really happy because it was nice for the hearing and good for the dancing. But that's not the good part of the night's story. Jamie, one of Dilshan's friends, was there with a few of her own friends and invited us to join her, which is the only reason we really went there in the first place. I noticed that one of the club's patrons was the a DJ who did the guest music round at the last installment of trivia night at Lush. Later in the night, I ran into him in the bathroom. Well, I wouldn't say that I ran into him so much as I would say that I saw him in one of the bathroom stalls with his pants down by his ankles and puke down the front of his shirt, booting into the toilet. It was actually more than slightly funny because the bathroom attendants didn't really know what to do with him other than to open the door to make sure he hadn't fallen over and laugh at him. In my head I renamed him "DJ Puked on Himself" and let out a small chuckle, knowing it would be a good joke for my blog (do note: it totally is). So, as we're leaving the club, Jamie was trying to find one of her friends, who, I might add, had a pretty fly jacket Jamie collected out of coat check. No friend in sight, looks like I'm wearing the jacket tonight. Of course I put it on. So we leave the club, and in the cab home, Jamie was still a little worried as to the whereabouts of her friend, but she eventually brushes it off as merely a separation of ways. During a lull in the conversation, I casually interjected that I saw the DJ from Lush last Wednesday in the bathroom with puke all over himself and his pants down by his ankle, testing out my DJ Pukes on Himself line in the process. Turns out, Jamie's missing friend is the one and only DJ Pukes on Himself, and it's his fly ass jacked I've donned. We all had a good laugh in the end and the Mystery of the Missing Friend was finally solved, without the help of that damn Cam Jansen.

So that's essentially the story of my weekend. Nothing else really to report from the weekend. Sunday's time in Beihai park with Pops, while interesting, isn't the kind of thing you write blogs about, but more the kind of thing you take pictures of. Oh except one story, which isn't even from the actual park so it doesn't defeat my previous statement. On the way to meet my Dad, we saw the subway doors close on a woman's pony tail, trapping her in the doors. It sounds pretty bad, but the train was so full that it wasn't like she could have walked further into the train anyway. It was just funny that as soon as it happened, hysterical laughter erupted from everyone who still had to wait to get on the next train, myself included. Only in China.

moist...

jazz flute

Weekends in China have become, more often than not, a vessel for drunken debauchery and lecherous activity. This past one was no exception. However, it played out more in a conceptual, theoretical manner than it did in a practical, tangible one, partly because the tomfoolery of the weekend didn't become as firmly imprinted on the cerebral cortex region of ye olde braine as I would have preferred. However, that means not that nothing of interest happened this weekend.

Friday, we introduced the people of Beijing to the ultimate ostentatious extravagance of American culture that is the Party Bus. For Pat and Jenny's 21st Portuguese Codfish Birthday Extravaganza, we ended up renting a 33 seat bus, loading it up with some booze and equally inexpensive hookers and bar hopping around the city. A group of us headed downtown to get the party started with a delicately delicious dinning dissertation of Yunnan food at a restaurant called Middle 8th near Sanlitun. Yunnan food is spicy, which is right up my proverbial bowling alley. After dinner, the bus returned with a crate load of drunks comprising largely the rest of our program, ready to keep the party rolling down the streets of Beijing until of 5am deadline arrived. We sort of hit a problem with having a 33 person bus packed with around 37 people, but serious offenses were avoided. However I'm getting ahead of myself and our story hasn't even officially begun.

Not only had we begun drinking at 6:30pm in the bus on the way to dinner, arriving at dinner somewhere after "happy" but on the way to "disgraceful," the quantities of alcohol we had on the bus itself would have put a P. Diddy trailer party on the set of his new music video "Freakin' in Ma' Trailer Between Takes" to shame. We bounced over to Nanjie for a drink or two and then headed back to Arena to close out the night. Our magnificent plans for the evening of rolling deep to 4 of Beijing's nightspots (Nanjie, Brown's, Arena and Bananas), as well as touring Tiananmen and the old city wall were slowly murdered in the face of being one and a half hours behind schedule, as if it were an insect under the foot of that sadistic kid in grade school who used to pull the legs of cockroaches and watch them feebly attempt to run around on his basement floor. So, after leaving from dinner, we actually only ended up at Nanjie for the grand total of around 15 minutes and then headed over to Arena. Which was fine with me because my insatiable appetite for club dancing is ever present. Eventually, after the memories became hazy, drowned in the rough, North Atlantic sea of beer and hard liquor, my French toast breakfast at Lush was devoured and we ventured home... 11 hours after we departed. The sun was full on awake when I finally closed my weary, probably heavily bloodshot eyes at 6:30am. Obviously, the Party Bus was an epic undertaking, which may not have been fully captured in the text above. Like I said, conceptually, it makes you want to cream yourself in a jealous rage that is dashed with a hind of admiration and humility. In practice, not much really happened, except when we finally had to move those donkeys.

Saturday, as you can imagine, was spent in severe recovery mode, downing water like my name was Aquaman and la duzi-ing out what I now believe to be solidified alcohol. So there's not much done. Oh, except we went to eat dinner at a restaurant by the West Gate of campus and, I guess in their attempt to hide whitey from the rest of the restaurant's patrons, we ended up in a private room in the back. Shortly into our meal, we discovered a pair of panties, balled up and shoved in the corner of the room behind the door. In my opinion, someone either a) got freaky deaky in the restaurant or b) liked the food so much they had to leave a token of their appreciation. Although I was pretty sure people don't tip in China, but I guess if you're going to tip, you better make it memorable.

Sunday we ventured out into Hohai, this awesome area around a series of lakes that aren't not too far from Beida. It's a nice place to walk around, with random funky little shops and a few hutongs scattered about. There's also a bunch of bars around one of the lakes, so we pretty much just stayed there after the sun set. We ate dinner at another Yunnan restaurant called South Silk Street which was, again, a symphony on the palate. I think I'm biased because I love spicy food more than I love the touch of a good woman. And we all know how much I love the touch of a good woman... or any woman really. Ping and I racked up a few more kicks off the public consumption of alcohol on our way to find a bank, just cuz we can. We decided to go to two bars that night. Zoo was our first stop, where somehow, Jess O managed to negotiate a rack of 12 shots of Absinth for only 100 kuai. Needless to say, if her talents were limited to this alone, you'd still want to keep her around. The bars in Hohai are much more traditional bar like than the other places we've been to in Beijing. A relaxing atmosphere was nice after the blitzkrieg on the senses the Party Bus induced. After grabbing myself a couple more shots of Absinth (obviously an idea which should be memorialized for it's benefits to society) we left Zoo and walked next door to this live jazz club called East Shore Jazz Cafe. It was a really nice place with a live band was decent, accompanied by this incredible female vocalist who wasn't too bad on the eyes either. Ping and I, continuing the "No, Hohai will be fine. I don't really want to drink that much tonight anyway," sentiment I had established earlier in the day, split a bottle of wine while we semi-talked political philosophy and let the smooth melodies of the band carry us down their river of serenity. I felt all classy and shit.

Getting fairly drunk two days out of the weekend doesn't strike me as shockingly out of the ordinary. When one of those days is a Sunday, I start to enter shades of gray on truthfully answering the question: "Are you an alcoholic?" A great notion to realize given that my Dad is coming to visit on Friday. Still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with him, which is the task for the rest of the afternoon. Well, that and leaving more than a 20ft radius of where I'm currently lying, but you'd have a better chance getting a fish to drive a submarine. No matter, this weekend is one for the pages, providing a chance to go to places I haven't been to in Beijing before and do things I'll probably never do again in my entire life. Ahh, the cavalierity of youth.

war games...

flexiblicious

This weekend, Sunday being the as expected exception, has provided a cavalcade of blog material, which pleases me because it's been almost a week since I got excited about writing a blog entry like it was a juicy romance novel with Fabio on the cover. Combining features together like we were developing the iPhone, this weekend served many purposes, all of them, again like the iPhone, things we'd already seen just never in the same weekend. Ok, that analogy went way to far. It was another opportunity to celebrate Tucker's 21st birthday, another opportunity to flaunt myself in front of my Chinese teacher, and as usual, another opportunity to visit one of Beijing's hottest nightspots.

Friday evening, we all got tickets to go see a Chinese acrobat show, which was one of the most astounding things I'd ever seen. The show was kind of set to a soundtrack of a strange set of what can only be described as techno remixes to traditional Chinese music, with a lighting scheme and smoke machines that looked like the had been pinched off a nightclub down the road. Personally, I'm always down for that sort of thing, but I can imagine it would come off a little weird when complimenting an acrobatic performance. However, the show was, I can say with a rather large amount of certainty, the most amazing stage show I've ever seen in person. I have never been so awe-struck at how incredible the stunts these people were pulling off were. I have also never been so afraid for someone's life since that time I was caught up in that bank heist and held hostage for 42 hours. No wait, that wasn't me. That was Tim Daily on ABC's "The Nine." I'm always getting our lives confused. Highlights of the show to follow.

In the first scene, for lack of a better word, these four women made some of the strangest human pyramids I've ever seen, requiring an incredible amount of strength and, my favorite attribute in a woman, flexibility. Needless to say, I had more than one dirty thought during the show. The finale of this part, however, was ridiculous. These 4 women each wrapped their mouth around the protrusions of this 15 foot tall curved metal poll. They then proceeded to bend there entire body over and rest their backs on the top of their heads, throwing their legs in the direction their eyes were looking. On paper, it's hard to follow. In person, it's even stranger. Somewhere halfway through this stunt, these ladies, in performing feats that seem physically impossible for the human body to actually do, stopped being people in my mind. Which I guess was the point because they were trying to create some human representation of a plant of some sort. It didn't make sense at the time and it still doesn't. But I know talent when I see it.

The second scene involved tossing little boys onto each other's shoulders. Exciting, I know, but your time is better spent hearing other stories. The final scene before intermission had plate spinners, which was equally as ridiculous as the girls from the first scene. First of all, yes, they were actually spinning plates, albeit plastic ones, on sticks that were about three feet long, 6 sticks at a time. And, not only were they lining up and walking across each other's heads while keeping their plates spinning, at one point, two of the plate spinners each stood on their head on the head of another woman supporting her... who was also spinning plates herself. If that's not enough, the upside down women also began spinning two giant plates with their feet. I don't know who came up with this idea or how you actually find people who can pull this off, but it was incredible. After intermission women juggled balls with their feet, which, when written like that, sounds like something out of a porn. No, there was no sex show during the acrobatic performance. But rest assured, it was just as cool.

Then, came the most tense performance I've seen. This guy climbed a stack of 8 chairs put top of each other, carefully balancing each one on the stack below as he build his own massive tower. I'd be impressed with a guy climbing a stack of 8 chairs without knocking it over alone. But let's just set the proverbial stage before we go on with the story. After about the 4th chair, his tower was too high for chairs to be just handed to him, and they had to be put on the end of massive poles just to reach the altitude this guy was pushing. I didn't know if his goal was to tag his name on the ceiling of the theatre ("Lee waz here!") or what, but each time another chair came out, I couldn't believe it. Oh yeah, not only was this guy at least 25 feet above the stage by the end of it all, he was also doing strength tests, balancing on his hands etc. while tempting Murphy's Law and trying not to die. Maybe that's why he was pouring with sweat. Like I said earlier, never have I seen someone stare the Gods of Chance so squarely in the face and then bust a nut right in their collective and metaphorical eye. Dude had balls of steel.

Then they put 13 women people on a bike and rode it around.

Last night, after an afternoon of hilariously off-key karaoke as a class with our Chinese teacher and a deliciously home cooked meal for Tucker's birthday at our program director Dr. Sun's apartment, we all headed out to Arena, one of Beijing's newest clubs. For starters, China was being an angry mistress that day and it had been raining all day and it was starting to get a little frigid. Around halfway through our cab ride to where we thought the club was located, the rain began to solidify in a sort of transitive property type transition, from rain to sleet, sleet to snow. Interesting story, we had previously tried to find Arena earlier in the semester shortly after it opened, to no such luck. We ended up in exactly the same area as we were before, something we should have took as a bad omen, but still pressed on in our search for Arena. Pat, Jenny, Tucker and Nelka were the only cab that actually made it to the club because they were the only ones who had the magazine page with the club's address. Smart call. After wandering around in the snow for about 15 minutes, and calling Pat about 4 times, we finally realized that we weren't even on the right road. So we jumped in a cab and finally ended up in the right area, but still could not find the club. Here's why.

So the club was located in, of all places, a mall in an area that seriously looked like it could have been right out of Miami or L.A. There was a huge outdoor awning over this giant courtyard surrounded by shopping centers. As would normally be expected, one of the newest clubs in Beijing would most likely be in it's own building, with an easily noticeable sign denoting it's location. However, Arena is in the basement of one of the malls, its sign being no more than 3 and a half feet wide. Maybe that's why the club was empty on a Saturday night.

Arena is a club that spits some serious hot fire. The decor and layout is trend black tight. The lighting is full of mood, class and variety. All the while, DJ Edmund spun some hot jams as we danced on their raised illuminated dance floor, being the first, and probably only time, Rick Ross has been played and fully appreciated in China. Plus their 90 kuai all you can drink beer and Chivas and coke can only help. And since we were the only people at the club, once again, VIP status poured from the walls. Another group of Asian people showed up about half an hour after we arrived, bringing with them some "fine honeys" as the term goes. One girl was even sporting a pair of coochie cutters, which made everyone happy. The alcohol flowed like the Nile and our dance moves oozed a sexy that only comes when you dance, uninhibited, without the shame that comes from being around a club full of people. At one point, one of the waiters came up to me and told me I danced very well. I don't know if he was just complimenting me or trying to hit on me, but either way, it was probably one of the best things a Chinese person has ever said to me, next to the time that guy told me he was shocked I didn't have "pretty American girlfriend." When we finally left the club around 3am, there was about 3 inches of snow on the ground. It was weird finally seeing snow on the ground in China, however toxic precipitation that falls from the heavens of China may be, but it still reminded me of home and got that whole "winter wonderland" thing going, definitely masking the usual grime that tends to perpetuate throughout this city. All in all, a pretty ballin' night.

Well its about 28 degrees and quite blustery outside. Plus, apparently this is Chinese Valentine's Day, marking the end of the Lantern Festival, so once again, the city sounds like its under attack as the explosions of fireworks resonate through the streets. Needless to say, China's angry this evening.

don't you dare meet me at the mall...