Chinese Nightlife

Chinese nightlife is a crazy beast. Let me preface this post by saying I very rarely ever went out to nightclubs in the states. Not really my scene, cheesy music/people, etc - preferred small bars and chilling at house parties. That being said though, I've spent a decent amount of time here at various nightclubs. Lan Kwai Fong district in Hong Kong, No. 88 Bar and G Plus in Shanghai, Phoebe Bar in Hangzhou, and a few places in my city Jiaxing. They're really crazy places, way different then American establishments. A lot of them are all decked out with chandeliers and crazy couches, really stylish. The usual lack of a dancefloor was upsetting at first, but you adjust to it. Chinese people can't dance apparently, and they all just like to stand at their tables and move around a little bit. In addition to that, just think clowns on stilts, singers and dancers, and fruit buckets. Yeah, it's definitely different then anything I've ever seen before.

Oh man. There's been a lot of memorable nights out. One really standout story is the night I was meeting a few friends at Lo Has, the biggest and most popular club in our town. As we were waiting for one friend, a friggin' Lamborghini pulled up to the entrance of the club. In Jiaxing, there's plenty of nice cars i.e. BMWs, Mercedes, etc, but a Lambo was something I'd never seen before. Later on that night, some random Chinese guy walked up to our table and said hello. I gave him a cup of beer out of politeness, since you never know who you're dealing with. Sure enough, a few minutes later he came back over and invited us all to his party's table. The head of the table was the guy driving the Lamborghini! My roommate Kyle even went for a ride in it, said it was nuts. Another interesting side note to that was that they may very well have been gangsters - Kyle refused a toast after being coerced into drinking 4 straight glasses of Hennessey, and the guy poured the entire drink down his shirt. His friends intervened, but still - very unlike the majority of Chinese culture.

I'm a DJ too, so a lot of this time was spent evaluating the music/crowd/etc. My computer started having real problems when I got to China, so I couldn't use my preferred DJ setup - Ableton. Spent well over a 100 hours warping and chopping tracks to DJ with that I can't use now. But used it enough to impress some people at a local club, Club TNT, and got in the door. Spent a few weeks practicing and learning how to CDJ, with CD turntables, and got things down with that. Had my debut on a Friday night, and things seemed to go pretty well! Arranged to spin there every Friday, and I went back on the Monday and DJ'ed again. However, this is China and anything and everything can happen, and apparently they shut down the club a day or two after I had been there. It was a pretty big shock and dissapointment, nobody even told me besides a friend that DJs at Lo Has. Pretty big setback, but at least now I know CDJs, and am going to look for DJ gigs in Shanghai. Life goes on..

Modesto Orizzonte - "Bliss (Lorn - Soft Room)"

Bliss - (Lorn - Soft Room) from Modesto Orizzonte on Vimeo.

Hehe. Little Halloween inspired post. Cool video. Anything Lorn touches is gold, dude is real dark and heavy.

Pendulum - "Set Me On Fire"

Can't get enough of this track. So so on Pendulum the group, but definitely big ups this one. Womp womp

Bonkers in Honkers

Hong Kong has more high-rises (buildings over 30 stories) then any other city in the world. Plus it's located right in the middle of a gorgeous tropical island setting. What more could you ask for in a legendary, truly international and first-class city?

A women who teaches at another school in my town referred to Hong Kong as saying, "It's Bonkers in Honkers". That was kind of the unofficial slogan for a recent trip that me and two colleagues made down to HK for a visa run. Paid for by the school, we got in on a Monday afternoon and had to leave 48 hours later on the Wednesday. Still though, we had an amazing time. Lots of great food that's hard or impossible to find in Jiaxing (Indian, Thai, sushi, etc..), explored famous areas like Kowloon, Lai Kwan Fong, and Central, and generally enjoyed ourselves. I definitely feel like not enough time was spent there, look forward to exploring more in the future.

Hangzhou

We went to Hangzhou for a weekend sometime shortly after Shanghai. Roughly half the size of Shanghai and twice the size of Jiaxing, I was interested in checking it out. I had heard good things about West Lake. Another really fun, rewarding exploration of China. Highlights included really really tasty Indian food, West Lake and the giant Pagoda on the south of it, riding a traditional boat on the lake, Phoebe Bar/Casablanca, and some really awesome Mexican food. In America, we assume diversity in cuisine, unlike China. In Jiaxing, there are no Indian or Mexican restaurants, and I've found it's something I crave a lot. Paneer Tikka Massala and Enchiladas never tasted so good, ugh..

North-South Lake / Chinese women

My story with Emily is like a lot of experiences I have had in China: in many ways frustrating and incomprehensible, but yet a fond memory. I had gotten the number for several different Chinese girls and spent one week taking each one out on dates, trying to see if I wanted to date any of them. The first one, Zhulang something, was not too attractive. Went to a nice Thai restaurant, and she was spitting bones on the ground from the fried frog. Pretty frequent Chinese custom apparently but nonetheless not too appealing. The next girl, Ju Yao, didn't speak a single word of English, making communication slightly challenging to say the least. My Mandarin is barely understandable at this stage, although I'm doing my best to add a few words a day.

Emily was the third and last one, and definitely the best. She was 23, adorable, and a really fun chick. She brought a friend with her to translate our first night at dinner, and should have spotted the foreshadowing. We ended up agreeing to date later that night, I was really into her, but communicating was pretty difficult. A few days later, we went to North-South Lake with some of my teacher friends, a really great outing. We had my friend Peter's girlfriend, Vicky Gung, with us - helped translate. Realized her English was almost non-existent, although she could say a few basic things and was trying really hard.

North-South Lake was really beautiful, some 2 hours outside of Jiaxing by bus. We hiked around the mountain for a while, grabbed lunch, then rented some boats and chilled on the water all afternoon. Really relaxing and pleasant day, and me and Emily were getting along really well. A week later she broke up with me though, citing difficulty in communication. Her text was in Pinyin Chinese and I had to get it translated since I couldn't understand it, so I accepted her point. Shame, I liked her a lot, but life goes on. My Chinese has gotten better since then, but it progresses extremely slowly. Oh well, life goes on. The single picture I have of her is pretty awkward too, she seems to have a phobia of looking at the camera. C'est Lavie..

2010 Shanghai World Expo

Surreal. Otherworldy. Wildy Futuristic.

Really enjoyed my several hours at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Hit a lot of the European pavilions (Czech Republic was randomly the coolest, hands down, completely abstract and bizarre), the giant African pavilion, and many Latin American ones. Had a Quilmes from Argentina after walking around for miles, a nice memory of my times there. The Chilean pavilion was pretty incredible also, as well as the outsides of many that I didn't have time to wait in line for. Like I said, biggest crowd of people I've ever seen. They recently passed the 1.7 million visitors list I saw in the news.