New Years in Houhai

Between BNU and Tiananmen square are a series of lakes that lay out north and west. Towards the north and west end of the lakes, the lakes are surrounded completely by American expatriate bars. Budweiser signs are everywhere and in front of each of the 200 bars, a young Chinese man stood to yell at everyone and try to hassle them into going into their bar. Most of the bars were laughably overpriced with horrible jpop style keyboard and singer entertainment. A few had their patrons joining them in revolutionary songs. We stopped into a hole in the wall that was clearly the home of a 30 year old couple. We drank our drinks as fast as possible to avoid the ice melting and left again. On the other side of the lake we found a shady chinese club. A Campy chinese DJ spun fresh house music, alternating beats every 16 to 24 measures. every 32 or so he cut the volume and shouted into the mic ZENMEYANG?!?! or HAOBUHAO?!?! meaning roughly HOW WAS THAT?!?!. All of the Chinese dancing awkwardly screamed and danced harder. There were a few other westerners in the club. A good number of our classmates were in side. The club was a piece of shit from the outside, but a legitimate subculture business spot from the inside. The first time upstairs to use the bathroom, i made note of the line of sex booths next to the bathroom. The second trip up to the bathroom i made note of the overwhelming smell of opium. By the time i came out of the bathroom they had lit a bunch of incense sticks to cover it up. Downstairs relatively thugged out chinese men played dice in the dimly lit recesses of the back areas and a handful of chinese women danced enthusiastically far from the dance floor and screamed of being planted and paid by the clubs owners for atmosphere. At midnight I ran to the bridge in the middle of the main lake and met a group of our students and a number of top students from BNU that had come with us. Fireworks were launched from both the north and south and the scene of endless expatriate bars as far as you could see in both directions with thousands of people wandering and drinking was quite something to behold. We returned to the club, but after long we decided to join the growing number ice skating out on the actual lake itself. Tom and I lowered ourselves onto the ice, but the girls were wearing skirts and i moved to position myself to allow the girls something to climb down upon. However before I could be of any help, I went right through the ice and fell into the lake up to my waist. It never became any kind of problem, and i was able to quickly pull myself right out of the water, but we had to quickly catch a taxi home so i could get dry clothes on and not die or get sick. Upon returning home, many people stopped by our room again for drinks and Ned proceeded to explain and demonstrate to us why the handful of Dulce Gabana and Diesel jeans he had bargained for that day were counterfit, pointing out the specific seam discrepencies and mistakes only a real enthusiast would know to spot. Today we are nursing our hangovers and heading to the great wall before returning for the first day of classes.