Dispatches from the East

One of my favorite neighborhood spots to eat is often a source of entertainment whilst eating. It is the place where I met my German friends, and this week there were two entertaining encounters. The first happened upon returning to my table (replete with little plastic stools for chairs that don’t quite reach up to my knees, needless to say, I look pretty cool while eating there) from getting a beer at the shop. I returned to find a little kid of about 3 or 4 holding my copy of The History of Western Philosophy in his hands. Considering that I have no shortage of difficulties grasping most of the ideas there-within, I can’t imagine that he was faring much better. I don’t think it helped that he was holding it up-side-down either.  After sitting with him for a minute and reading a few words to him, his grandma came over with a good smile and a small cup. She pointed to bottle of beer and indicated that she wanted a bit of it. Not being one to deny a kindly, old granny a drink, I obliged. I was a bit surprised when she handed it to the little guy who promptly knocked it back. It wasn’t much beer, but I still got a good kick out of the whole scene. I try not to contribute too much to the delinquency of Chinese youth, but as far as I’m concerned, granny can do what she pleases with her progeny.

The lad himself:

The second story also involved youngins, but this time there was no underage drinking. You can imagine that a lao wai (do you remember your Chinese lesson from the earlier post?) sitting in an small alleyway restaurant tucked far away from the international hotel chains of downtown would be quite a novelty for young kids. They typically will come up, shout ‘nice to meet you!’ a few times, and then I’ll break out Angry Birds on the phone to entertain them. Last week there was quite a raucous bunch that perhaps got a little too fired up. After showing off and one-upping each other’s antics, the scene devolved into name calling. Two of my favorites were simply, “pig”, and the best, “dog farmer”. They were brusquely asked to remove themselves from the premises by a local shopkeeper. Though I couldn’t understand exactly what she said, she certainly seemed like a woman best obeyed.

The last event came on Friday night. I don’t go out as often as I do back home, but a man needs to blow off some steam every once and a while. Last Friday was one of those nights. There was a British DJ in town who was playing a dubstep set at a local club (kind of a Triple Rock or 7^th St. Entry type place). I’ve never been into the dubstep scene, but it turned out to be a pretty entertaining night. Here is a video clip from early in the night, before things jumped up a notch or twelve:

After the set the shenanigans carried on until the wee hours with all sorts of European miscreants in tow. I think a video my buddy Mark posted of Conan pretty well sums up what people dancing to dubstep resemble:

That’s all for now. Hope everyone ate plenty of turkey in my stead.