Jess had a couple of bomb crackers (fireworks that sound as loud as a gun shot) and he had this great idea of taking it along. Walking back towards the club, now around 22:45 the streets leading towards the club empty, apart from a couple of street vendors selling food on every corner. Fireworks in hand we decided to start spreading the good news of New Years. Don't really know if fireworks are allowed in the streets, but hey... it's only New Year once a year. The first firework ignited and was thrown right in the middle of the street. It went off with a bang... windows reverberating and car alarms going off around us!! "What a beautiful sound this time of night" i was thinking to myself. After a couple more of those and one ending up right in front of a police car we decided to leave them in a little bush where we could retrieve them from again later.
Entering the bar/club it sounded pretty quiet. Through the whole night there was only about 20-30 people... not too many for an occasion like the New Year. On entering the club i could hear with my little Chinese and the broken English of the DJ that they are welcoming these two white faces assisted with the Chinese girl. Partly cause everyone looked at us when we walked in and a "Hallo" by die DJ and locals. We were taken to a nice couple of red couches right next to the dance floor with complimentary seeds. Yip, in China it is not peanuts but seeds. We ordered about five beers and started making ourselves comfortable. I felt in a dancing mood so needless to say it didn't take long for me to enter the dance floor. The dance floor was more like a small little stair, just high enough that you should realise it is not part of the walk area. We started dancing and i saw this Chinese move by a couple of girls that i needed to get the hang off. A couple of minutes later... there was I, Jess and Amy doing this dance with the locals having a ball. What can i say we had to teach them a dance as well. The only dance that came to mind that me and Jess would know i thought, must be the "Macarena". It turned out that i was correct. Here we were, teaching the "Macarena" to Chinese people with Chinese songs. We were the heroes.
Learning the Chinese dance before heating it up with the Macarena!!
After a couple of dances i started making my way down the dance floor, a young man appearing out of nowhere shoved a beer in my hand and said "gumpay" meaning down with me. No worries... got that one down... then this girl enters with another beer and repeats the same word "gumpay", wanting me to down with her. Jess walking towards the dance floor wanting to take a photo of me downing gets a beer shoved in his hand "gumpay". He drank the beer as quick as he can and made his way back to the couches in no time. Man, Chinese people love downing. It is a symbol of respect to drink and down with someone i think... who knows... just down it.
So midnight arrived and with some more "gumpaying" we enter the New Year. Let me not forget about the drunk man that had his arm around my shoulder, not really in a way to be a good friend, more in a way of keeping himself on his feet. Yip, he also just walked up to our table, using Amy's drink to "gumpay" with me and Jess. The waiters got him away quickly!!
As if we hadn't been treated like VIP's yet, the owner of the club came up to us and sponsored us another 3 beers after he "gumpayed" with us. Now we were Rock stars!!
Well, it ended up being a great start to the New Year!!!
You might think that i was totally wasted hey?? Well, i have successfully worked out that if i was in London i would have had two pints, and if in South Africa i would have had three dumpies (bottles of beer). The beer in China is only 3%alc. How can you not have a couple more than your average Londoner have per day?
(Linfen, Shanxi Province, China)
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