Racking up points for cultural experiences

I’ve written a bit about the cultural experience of McDonalds abroad before, but these past couple days have all been about seeing different sides of Beijing. I’ve been to a DJ dance party, a hardcore punk show, and a sports bar. This is not the kind of stuff I do in the States. At home, I listen to bluegrass mostly. Maybe a little bit of ska. The hardest stuff I listen to is Catch 22 or maybe Flogging Molly. I don’t go to dance parties, and I don’t thing I’ve ever been in a sports bar, but when in Rome, right?

I won’t bore you with details of the DJ thing. It was loud, there were lots of lights, smoke machines, drunk people. We stayed out late. We danced a lot. I talked to the bathroom attendant a good amount, mostly because it seemed like a pretty thankless job. I ran into Colby kids, go figure.

Prior to this exercise in excess, Kyle and I watched the opening ceremonies on an enormous plasma screen set up for that very purpose in a park. Everybody was smiling. The show was great (I mean, did you see it??) but the crowd was pretty fantastic too. They were just so psyched. It was a good place to be. We got a little bit of dinner in a Cantonese restaurant near the park while the country procession was still going on. In the center of the room, under a tv screen, a group of young Chinese environmental activists were drinking, saluting, and spontaneously breaking into song. They sang the national anthem, and old communist songs from their grammar school days. The fact that their work involves criticizing the government for environmental inadequacies meant nothing at all. The Olympics were opening in China, like never before.

The punk show was a totally different story. The club is one I’ve been to before, quite a few times, but I’d never seen groups like this. The second band (the first isn’t really worth mentioning) was lead by a guy wearing pajamas, bright socks, and big white glasses. He had an incredible amount of energy (not to mention style) and seemed to be pretty talented. We found out later he’s just graduated from high school, and Mike, the club owner swears up and down he’s the next big thing.

Then there was the main attraction, a hardcore street punk band called demerit. The lead singer had a roaring-threeheaded-tigerbeast tattooed on his stomach. He stood up, and all the drunk guys moshing in front of the state would run up and hold their hands out to him, begging for more. That’s what I call stage presence. The music itself, was pretty good. It’s easy to think of Punk and just so much noise, but once you start listening there’s actually a lot of melody, and a lot of the music (connected to how political it is as a musical movement) borders on anthemnic. Add simple lyrics and a willingness to let the biggest fan sing into the mic, and it was a pretty dynamic show. Not something I’m going to listen to in my room, but incredibly fun to watch.




The sports bar, an enormous two floor compound on the edge of town, was a different story. There the dynamic performance was the US roundly trouncing China in the first basketball game of the Games. It was pretty easy to follow what was going on. When the huge American contingent let out a guttural roar, that meant we’d just put one past Yao Ming. When the smaller Chinese group started cheering “Zhong Guo Jia You” (literally, step on the gas, china) that meant we’d dropped the ball. It’s worth mentioning that I ran into a friend named Charles at this pub (The Goose n’ Duck). Charles goes to Bowdoin. He’s been in Harbin for the last seven months, and got to Beijing yesterday morning. I had no idea he was around, but that’s the kind of place Beijing is.

I run into people I know, people I used to work with, and people I just recognize for some reason on an almost daily basis. Don’t ask me why.

Looking towards the future, the cultural experiences look like they’re going to continue. Kyle and I are watching beach volleyball on Wednesday, and on Thursday we head out west to Xinjiang, where you might have heard there’s a bit of an insurrection going on. It should be pretty interesting.