Beijing nights

Cliff and I have been busy lately...We've taken an Economics test and moved on to Business Law and ethics and Financial Accounting. I am not really looking forward to the test on the latter. The ethic class is very interesting, especially since the melamine issue is still a very hot topic here. From my previous post, you can see that I am also concerned about food safety, but we can't guarantee the safety of everything we eat, and if someone is willing to poisons babies to make an extra buck, why wouldn't some they lie and say that something was imported when it really wasn't. I hope that our two plus years here aren't too damaging to us...thank good we don't have kids.

We also have been doing a decent amount of playing. I am starting to get more educated about the city and as our circle of friends grows, so does out local connections. For instance, we were invited out to the birthday party of the manager of one of the hottest restaurants in town. They shut down the place for the night and served cocktails all night. We ate passed appetizers and drank alot of time. Below is a picture of our company for the night...one venezuelan, one taiwanese and a spaniard. I can say that our crowd is becoming increasingly international.

Maggie and Elena have become frequent companions on the weekends and I have really enjoyed getting to know them. Here is us at Mosto, the restaurant hosting the birthday party. Its alittle expensive, so I don't get there as much as I'd like, but the whole evening was quite good.


There was a DJ spinning great tunes, white and red wine and great finger foods. I circulated like a rock star and got to meet great people. We danced until the wee hours and has a great time. As you can see from below, some of us enjoyed ourselves more than others (rest assured, I took advantage of the situation too--things haven't changed that much!)We've also been hitting the clubs lately with a group of friends. We have a solid group of girls in our group, so its been fun getting out with them. The wife of my class mate and maggie are great company, we they would prefer to speak chinese, and I'm more than happy to oblige, especially earlier in the evening. Below is the happiest man in Beijing.


ahhh...YMCA is happiness in any language...

and below is the obligatory cab ride home....sometimes not having a car is OK.
Cliff attended a class dinner last week and had the unique privilege of learning the zither from one of the most talented musicians in the country. One of our classmates owns a local restaurant, which is very traditional and it regularly hosts traditional musicians. Cliff was chosen to get up on stage and learn a couple of notes.

cliff has also been making friends with our classmates and hitting the night life with them. Below is our friend, Oscar, with everybody's friend Po, of Kungfu panda fame. I'm not sure which bar this panda was hanging out in, but he looks friendly emough.
We've also gotten a chance to check out the music scene here...Kanye West came on the 1st of Nov to the Workers Gymnasium, which is less than 6 blocks from our house.


This concert was by far the most bizarre event I had ever been too. As you can see above, the floor seats were rows of chair and were so, so far away from the stage. There didn't seem to be any connection between kanye and the audience. Also, all of the speakers were canted straight back, so unless you were sitting center stage, the sound quality was very poor. I was even able to have a conversation during the concert. the opening act (which was all of 10 minutes) was a Taiwanese rap group that repeatedly said "I'm so cool" for their first song did some hip hop dancing for the rest of the show. It was clearly an imitation of American music, and not a great one at that. The people around us loved them, but we were all alittle appalled.

When Kanye came on, no one in the stadium stood up or danced. Everybody stayed in their seats. Hardly any of the chinese looked excited...none of them put their hands up, very few clapped their hands or bobbed their heads or anything. It was like they all knew this would be a hot concert and that they should buy tickets, so they did, but didn't know any of the songs, or really the artist. The worst were the people on the floor...most stayed in their chairs, in they're business suits with their legs crossed, listening to the music. The few people that tried to get up and dance were put back in their seats by security. Finally, about an hour into the concert, Kanye started playing some of his more popular and up beat radio hits and people slowly started to dance. Interestingly enough, as soon as the show was 'over' (before the encore), the crowd clapped and became silent, like they didn't understand how to cheer for an encore. It was like someone had just flipped a switch.
Overall, the show was run poorly...that combined with the bizarre/under-musically-educated audience made for a night to remember...although I can't decide for good or for bad.

I know we've finally forged some friendships, as we were invited over to our Chinese classmate's house for dinner...His (Taiwanese) wife, stacy, cooked a great dinner...pasta, swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy and tiramisu....mmmmmm. Joining us was some other Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Thai and German friends.

Their daughter, Alyssa, became very attached to cliff...he read to her and helped he put stickers on some of her books. John and Stacy said that she really likes men, so Cliff was happy enough.
Never fear, this isn't driving us to have kids...we just like other peoples children. After a great dinner and a great time with friends, we happier returned their kids and cabbed it home. We really are having a great time in Beijing, making new friends and discovering the city....that's all for now!