Tuesday 8 May 2012

Dance Offs and Debauchery

After the intense working weekend of an English teacher in Beijing, Sunday evening comes the time where I am eligible to paint the red capital red. Though depending on how much watered down Tsingtao beer I consume from a giant 40 Yuan keg, perhaps a yellowish brown hue should be the more suitable choice of colour for painting the town, or at least a corner of my bathroom. The current hotspot for me and my colleagues, who due to a strange working schedule throws us together whether we like each other or not, is the PBD pizza bar. Of course we love each other really, and the topics of conversation, although rarely departing from frustrations in our attempts at educating spoilt Chinese kids, are always fun and varied, at least until we all stand up and dance in unison to “The Chicken Dance” song. This happens to be one of the tracks on our kindergarten class CD, and as educators/entertainers, we have mastered the technique of dancing perfectly in time to this kid’s party classic whilst feeling no shame whatsoever.








The bar itself is pretty nice and relaxed, serving as a student hangout for both Chinese and foreign students alike, offering cheap (but pretty yummy) pizza and other Western delicacies, as well as dirt cheap alcohol, ranging from the mentioned Tsingtao keg (fiendishly guised in a Hoegaarden glass), to mixers, shots, and all the quirkily translated cocktails you could imagine. After the initial “phew, the weekend is finally over” pint or five, the atmosphere starts to heat up around 10 as the bar staff pump up the volume of the music, instantaneously attracting more students like flies, and thus begin the many (attempted) dance offs. Since discovering the bar (thanks Simone!) it came to our attention that although being pretty packed most nights and playing loud (albeit generally dire) music, that nobody was getting their boogie on. Although perhaps an ambitious claim, we’re pretty proud that our Chicken Dance moves followed up nicely with Ricky Gervais style flash dance mixed with MC hammer shit to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” caused a dancing sensation that is now a regular feature on the PBD Sunday night roster. As I mentioned earlier, the bar is pretty nice and friendly, and is full of Chinese students from all corners of the country, all of whom are up for a bit of dancing after a few drinks. We met these guys from Guizhou (a relatively under-developed province in south west China) who were celebrating a friend’s birthday, and after being showered generously with various liquors from these guys, we got up and repaid the favour by being true ambassadors of the highest of Western culture by dancing pristinely and elegantly to Usher’s “Yeah”. This in turn, caught the eye of a nearby bloke wearing tight clothes, who was shaking his body and was dancing in a highly suggestive manner that would most likely bring trouble upon his head should he portray said dance style in a bar in my hometown. That was our cue to decide to take a sudden interest and yearning to play table football.


You got served bro!

This Sunday I chose not to indulge in such shenanigans, and headed down to the old part of Beijing for a gig at the Yu Gong Yi Shane concert hall. It’s not a massive place, perhaps a little smaller than the Brighton Corn Exchange or The Underworld in Camden, though it’s the spiritual home of Beijing’s thriving music scene. It was only my third trip there, previously seeing Danish outfit The Ravonettes and American indie pop group The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (sounds like a band formed by a group of teenagers who hang out shopping malls right?), and this time I went with my girlfriend to see Australian indie pop duo/couple Agnes Kain. Although not particularly well known across the world (I came to this conclusion due to their not having a Wikipedia page), they were completing their China tour, and played a lovely set of sweet guitar/keyboard driven tunes. The crowd wasn’t huge, though was pretty responsive after each song and clapped along happily as the singer/keyboardist became more and more perplexed by smoke emitting sporadically from the stage. They tested out a couple of tracks from their upcoming third album, and their charm and honesty was exposed after a mouth piano malfunction and a prompt explanation about how they hadn’t rehearsed the new material a great deal. Still, after getting my feet going almost as much as The Chicken Dance, as well as hanging out at the bar and chatting after the show, the band are in my good books.

Agnes Kain - awwww
 I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any more gig news and will do my best to report any incidences from any of Beijing’s wide array of bars. It seems something worth raising an eyebrow to or writing about occurs in almost any given drinking hole on any given night here, as people party like crazy and paint the red town yellowy brown. I’ll keep you posted.

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