Thursday, September 28, 2006

Singing for my Supper

Music: Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - They provide the paint for the picture perfect masterpiece that you will paint on the insides of your eyelids (saying the title takes almost as long as the song)
Watching: Shameless - Series 1 (thankyou internet)

So tonight I went to a big official dinner thing, at Liaoyang's fanciest hotel, with
the mayor and all the local party elite in attendance. An occasion like this of course requires top notch entertainment, which was provided by the following:

Traditional Chinese Fan Dancers
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Traditional Chinese Opera Singers
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Not-so-traditional Chinese pop singers
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And this ass:
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Yep, I was told that I must prepare a song for this little swaree, and that all of the other foreigners there would also be doing some sort of performance. Turns out, all the other foreigners had the sense to say hellz no, so following the synth-beats, garish costumes, and fancy lighting displays of the Chinese performers, you got one kiwi, in a bad tie, singing a barely recognisable rendition of Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (my 'go to' kiwi song for China), acapella, to a room full of local Communist Party Bigwigs, Russian chemical magnates, weird Austrians, bemused Koreans and Japanese, and a handful of American's, all of whom are evidently better at saying 'no' than I am.

Anyway, the food was good, the toasts (with brandy) plentiful and I now have about 9 business cards (mostly in Chinese) including that of the ASSISTANT MAYOR. That's right. Take that everybody who's never had the personal mobile phone number of a mid-ranking party official of a small northern Chinese regional city.

Met a smattering of other foreigners, the Austrians are weird looking, but could be interesting, they look like they enjoy the odd dram. One guy had the most stellar 1980's porno mustache I've ever seen, mad as a bag of cats too, judging by our brief conversation.

I'm off to Dalian tomorrow, the so called “Hong Kong of the North”. Should be a fun few days even though I think we're getting shafted on accomodation costs (Fred, who I may or may not have mentioned previously, he's an american) arranged it all, so I'm just going with the flow on this first excursion out of Liaoyang.

Anyway, I'll be sure to get lots of pics, apparently the place has plenty of bars (I've even heard rumours of the existence of a bar that sells actual authentic Guinness Draft!), Russian Hookers for all, and impressive Communist thingamabobs. There's a beach of sorts too, but I've been told not to get my hopes up about it.

All comments in old-fashioned telegram style please STOP

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

and this ass, classic stop russian whores, he shoots, he scores stop stop it stop