Jammin' Out with my Clam Out on a Bumpin' Dance Floor

6/17

Slept in until about two and then nursed a hangover that left me feeling tired and weak.  I walked around
the city for quite a while, walking through a hutong with a small, but interesting market.  There were so many things I wanted to buy for other people but didn't for the moment.  I think I'm going to send another package full of souvenirs home after returning to Beijing from Mongolia.

I walked over to Tiananmen Square, which was huge, but somehow not quite big enough for me.  I think I must be at the "impossible to impress" point as it is the largest public square in the world.  It was interesting to see the Monument to the People's Heroes and Mao's mausoleum from the outside (as I explained to my Mom, it's only open from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. so it was unlikely I'd ever get inside).  My pictures have been boring me a bit as of late, so I decided I should try to focus more on the subject and actually finding meaning in the photo, so I snapped a few of the People statues next to the often-present CCTV security cameras and guards.  I headed home through this pretty little park I'd walked through before and got dumplings for dinner.

On my way to Tiananmen Square, I'd met Alex on the street and he reminded me of our plans to go to a club that night.  I'm not a big clubber, but it had been a while since I felt like I'd properly, really danced, and THE DANCE FLOOR MOVED.  If you've read more than one or two of my entries, you probably know by now that I'm a bit obsessed with obscure/oversized/bizarre/new things and this was no exception.  I'd never heard of such a thing and there was no way I was going to miss it, so even though my liver was screaming at me not to, I agreed to meet him at their hostel bar at 11.

I didn't get back until after 7 p.m. so by the time I'd eaten, run a few errands, taken a shower, dressed and messed around online for a while, it was time to go.  We had two beers at their hostel and then Alex, Eva and I headed to this club in a taxi (it came out to 15 RMB total, 5 (under $1 USD) each).  Terry had left for somewhere on some train already today, but had been kind enough to leave us an extra beer he had, which we split on the way there.  Eva and I were practically threatening Alex with bodily harm if the club wasn't as good as promised, but fortunately for him, it was.  The moving dance floor was strange- it felt like you were dancing on a speaker as it moved in tune with the music, but by itself, not just as vibrations from the overplayed techno.

So we all drank and had fun.  A singer at one point came on a hydrolic stage that lifted out of the dance floor, but I didn't think she was very good, though I was impressed by the dancers who came later.  The club was called Banana, which, the three of us agreed, sounded very gay, and might have been.  Two Chinese girls came up to me and started hitting on me pretty hard so I danced with them for a while.  The bar was decent too (which was only fair after a 30 yuan cover charge for women) and I got an excellent mojito.  They had a stripper pole, which I decided to try for the first time ever.  It was fun and I think I did quite well, and I felt like finally, all of my third grade dreams and ambitions were coming true.*

We were just getting ready to leave when a group of Chinese guys invited the three of us to join them.  They had more of that horrible jaeger-red bull (maybe) mix, but it was free so we stayed for a while.  Actually, the guys were quite nice, but it was difficult to talk to them since none of us spoke Mandarin and none of them spoke English very well.  Eva and I stayed for a while before getting a cab back, but Alex stayed with them until God knows when.  It was only 3:30 a.m. when we got back, which I was very happy with, since I'd thought it was much later, though I still crashed into bed loudly.

*Explanation: In third grade, during a normal show and tell type session, we were supposed to say what we wanted to be when we grew up.  I was disturbingly desperate for attention at that age, and so even though I didn't know exactly what it was or entailed, I, with my dresses and Shirley Temple permed hair, told my entire class that I wanted to be a stripper, just for the shock value of it.