night out

Last night aaron and i met up with some friends to bid our friend Heiner from Germany farewell, as he's leaving China this week.  It turned out to be a pretty funny night.  They made us a great dinner over at their apartment.  There was a couple from France, a girl from Iran, a guy from Austria, a Greek/English guy, a Chinese girl, the German couple, and us.  I found myself talking to the Chinese girl (who speaks German) in an odd mixture of German and Chinese and a little English.  The somewhat odd combination of languages I've studied actually was the perfect fit for once.  After dinner we went to a venue at the edge of the city by a drive in movie theater to see a Mongolian band play.  It was an amazing show with a really positive, receptive audience. Their music was a sort of a modern take on traditional Mongolian folk music. The singer played a small cello-like instrument with two strings, there was a small guitar/banjo type folk instrument, drums, guitar, flute, mouth harp, and singing. Much of the time they sang using the traditional throat singing style of Mongolia.  Low, eerie notes produced in the back of the throat and higher unearthly sounds which sounded like they couldn't possibly be coming out of a human mouth.  It was the best music I've seen performed in a long time.  

After the show we decided to go out together along with the Iranian girl's french and Italian friends we'd met up with.  Our German friends Heiner and Mareen decided they needed to take us to a Russian club they'd been taken to once before by their Russian friends.  A cab ride into the city later, and we were greeted by 4 Chinese doorman in tuxedos, one a dwarf, and decending an escalator sided by mirrored ceiling and plush red velvet walls into... Russia. There were Chinese people there to be sure, but the club did not feel Chinese.  I realized just how many Russians must live in Beijing to have this one club with so many.  Cocktail waiters in tuxes meanered among the guadily plush tables and chairs carrying elaborate fruit platters of melon, banana, and pinapple arranged in dramatic presentation, Russian dancers mingled among the tables in scanty sequined outfits and a lot of makeup.  More dancers danced on the long bar (one fell off  the 5 feet to the floor while we stood around nearby but seemed to be ok....) and in the middle, the dance floor flashed with lazor lights cutting through the smoke from the smoke machines and pulsated with the techno- remakes of Ace of Base and many Russian hits foreign to our ears.  

I think most of us felt a bit out of place at first as we hadn't really dressed to come to a club, but we were also enjoying the bizarre surroundings and people-watching.  The women's bathroom was something... i found myself waiting surrounded by the polished black walls hung with gaudy wall lamps and reproductions of 18th century Russian royalty portraits in guilded frames with about 8 women, all speaking Russian and wearing tight black miniskirts, leopard print dresses, high heels and glittery belts, long hair, eye shadow, eyeliner, lipstick, and cold expressions.  In my vintage button-up dress (neither tight nor sparkly and in shades of brown--possibly the most un-clubby of colors) i found myself feeling like i had been transported off the set of little house on the prarie.   The girl next to me looked me over and asked, in Russian, with no detectable friendliness in her voice, Are you Russian? I managed my most confident expression and replied using 1/5 of my russian vocabulary, "Nyet" and walked into the stall which had just opened in front of me. 

Back in the club we met 2 guys from Uzbekistan who were really nice and we joined them at their table.  I sat next to one of them communicating using almost entirely sign language as he spoke only Turkish and Uzbek.  I had a moment when the strangeness of my situation struck me. I was with friends from all over the world, in China, in a Russian club (after watching a Mongolian band), trying to communicate with a guy from Uzbekistan.  We ended up and dancing until almost 6 a.m.  

Aaron and I finally ascended the mirrored escalators, back past more portraits of Russian royalty, were bid farewell by the tuxedoed doormen, and stepped out of the strange Russian dream in which we'd spent the last five hours and into the crisp early morning air and morning light of another day in beijing. Our cab sped us across the quiet highways, past the twinkling buildings extinguishing their lights as the sky opened up and became light behind them.