Well January 21st was my birthday. Even though my girlfriend was still away at her folks still for the holiday, I had a blast. I went out to dinner with Manchester and his girlfriend, Fordy and his girlfriend Tex Mex, Dundee, Canada and my Chinese tutor and another student Xin Xin and her boyfriend. Manchester is another teacher at my college who has been here 5 years and owns a bar (which is actually rather common, I would guess 50% of all foreigner who live in China more than 3 years end up opening or buying into a bar). I would have invited several other students and other peeps as well but all of them are out of town for Spring Festival. We had a pretty good dinner, Manchester and girlfriend had to go to open his bar, but the rest of us headed to the KTV!!! That was a good time all around (involving 4 bottles of vodka, but of course I did not drink; note, my parents read this blog). I think most of us lost our voices by the end of the night. We got to sing some good ole favorites like Country Roads remix and Backstreet's Back (Alright!), which are currently the most famous dance songs in China, since Backstreet Boys are the most popular western group here. Our Chinese friends, who could actually sing, of course embarassed us with their singing ability. Here are some pics.
This is my blog. I will be chronicling my travels through China over the next year for my friends and anyone else that stumbles upon this blog. I will also periodically post my thoughts about current events, especially when such events pertain to myself, China, freedom, or "computer cards". Feel free to post comments but do be discreet in referring to yours truly. May you always drink deep...Aquafraternally yours.
So a couple of days after getting back from Hangzhou, on the 16th I headed out to Changsha in Hunan province with another FT, we will call him Fordy. The weather finally turned for the better, unlike Hangzhou, so it was a nice trip. We got sleeper train tickets for the short 5 hour train ride so it was nice and confortable, and quickly found a reasonably priced hotel (120 kuai/night) by the train station which was really clean. A student of mine whose family lives in Changsha met us on the second day and showed us some sights of Changsha. We couldn't climb the Ye Lu mountain since my ankle was still swollen from the twist in Hangzhou, but we went to the walking-shopping street, a cool snack food restaurant, the Lie Shi Gong Yuan-an awesome park with cool traditional buildings (many of these pictures are taken there), and the Yan Jiang Feng Guang Dai-the area along the river which has been recently renovated with various traditional style architecture around the walkways and chill out areas. One of the cool things about Changsha is that many older people hang out outside doing things like water calligraphy, playing various musical instruments and singing Changsha opera (not as famous as Beijing Opera but a bit easier on the ears for some). Check out the 3 videos of all three of these things. Other than that we went to a cool bar appropriately called Cool 9. After getting a bottle, a group of somewhat older people invited us to join their table and we partied with them for the rest of the night (and on their nickel). On the last night we finally found some foreigners by locating Houligans Pub, and within 10 minutes they had our laptop computer card problems fixed.