Late Night Chinese Dance Party

I got lost yesterday... twice.

Beau and I were out riding around town last night when we heard drums and cymbols. We followed our ears to a large crowd of Chinese dancing in an old courtyard. I couldn’t tell you where we were; we had been trying to find Ho-hai lake, the largest lake in Beijing, but somehow we managed to pass it – twice.

So anyway, we were who knows where watching a crowd of Chinese workers and their wives/girlfriends dance up a storm. These people probably didn’t see too many white guys before, because every one of those Chinese who saw us just stopped what they were doing and stared. Beau completely gave us away when he took a flash picture; heads turned and suddenly we had at least a hundred Chinese faces staring at us. The first thing through my mind was that none of the men were over 5’4” 120 lbs so I could probably take about ten of them if they rushed us.

Then, a friendly little woman rushed up to us and asked us to dance. Beau needed little encouragement; he threw himself into the thick of the dancing/moshing Chinese almost before she finished her sentence (which was in Chinese, only every other word of which I understood.) I hung back to take a few more pictures (and to make sure we were safe) before diving into the local culture head-first.

All eyes were still on us, though many other people were also dancing. This time though, there was scattered laughter as we taught them our moves and they taught us theirs. It was a really fun time for us! So the moral of the story is: when in China, get lost sometime! We had far more fun last night than we could have planned for!

We never did find that lake... Maybe next time!