nightlife!

This weekend I took the opportunity to do everything that I would not do if I were in Shenzhen 20 years later in my life; namely, I explored the bar and club scene downtown, and temporarily adjusted my sleep schedule to 5 am until noon. How's that for jet lag recovery?

The entire nightlife seemed quite European to me, probably because I spent most of both evenings in the expat district, Shekou. Shekou is about a 40 minute cab ride from my home district Bao'an (which is, as any Westerner will quickly point out, in the middle of nowhere). The ride felt long on the way there but provided a nice nap on the way back, so I could hardly complain. Also, the entire expat lifestyle/experience was something I hadn't really contemplated or taken part in, and it was both interesting and wildly different from my other experiences in China so far.

First off, and most overwhelmingly, there were foreigners everywhere. Even blondes. And somehow, after just 2 short weeks of Chinese immersion, they made me incredibly uncomfortable. I'm going to blame the fact that the group that chooses to leave their own country indefinitely probably lacks the social competency to thrive at home and are not actually representative of their home countries, rather than assume that I have forgotten how to interact with my own people. This is probably more fair than it sounds; after all, when I'm out at home generally a table of men does not place bets on my nationality and then argue with me about it ("no, Russian or British?"), and a random middle-aged man does not follow me throughout a bar attempting to pet my hair. And regardless, in any country it's likely to be a strange bunch that ends up at an Irish pub singing outdated American alternative rock along with a Chinese lead singer and her evidentally European band members at 4 am. (Although yes, I do realize that this is group I have become part of.)

Me, Jaris, and Andy at the Irish pub. Since I didn't bring my camera I'm relying on posted pictures from others - thank you, facebook.

Another important landmark of the weekend was eating American food. The first night Andy and Jaris and I ended up at Champs - yes, the American chain - sometime after midnight. On night 2, I had my first trip to a Chinese McDonalds, where Andy and I managed to spend 67 kuai on post-bar food (2 burgers, 2 medium fries, 20-piece chicken NcNuggets...). I don't even eat McDonald's at home, but I'm not too proud to say it was really quite delicious. Although I won't admit how many times I had to go back to the counter to ask for more ketchup.

Despite the appearance of basking in our local American getaway, there were some aspects of both Friday and Saturday night that were distinctly Chinese. We went to a KTV, for example, which I mentioned in an earlier entry but didn't fully experience until Saturday night. KTVs are wildly popular here, and essentially consist of small rooms rented individually with a big-screen TV, a few mics, and karaoke software. There are songs available both in Chinese and English - although the selection of Chinese songs is much more extensive - and since our group was divided between English and Chinese speakers, I got to hear a little of both. I could hardly imagine this concept becoming popular in the US on the scale that it is popular here. After all, isn't the whole point of karaoke to subject an entire bar to your sloppy singing of corny songs?

Anyway, back to work. I've got a classes of 2nd graders and 5th graders today, and they're not going to teach themselves! (Although I wouldn't mind if they did.)