Adventures in Guangzhou!

Not surprisingly, I was still filling up my plate when everyone was finished. I love eating and tend to eat quite a bit, especially when there's good food around. I felt a bit silly since everyone else had to wait for me, but by god--I was going to get my money's worth! Mmmm. Good food just makes everything better.

After the feast we headed back to Meggie's apartment for drinks and a home-made two layer frosted birthday cake. Yum! Diana seemed pleased which was great. I think I've asked Diana about a billion different questions about Guangzhou (and China in general) since this is her second year here and she has always been incredibly helpful and outgoing. In other words, she is one of my best friends here and she rocks.

To top the night off, we decided to head out for some good old-fashioned KTV--karaoke. This was my first experience going out for karaoke in China and it was pretty entertaining. Basically you rent a room with however many people you're with and you then have free reign to pick whatever songs you want and to order drinks and snacks. I sat back and listened to many different Chinese pop songs performed by the Yalies, and then Steven and I tried to represent the U.S. by picking a few English tunes. As I was going through the list, I saw a ton of random songs and wasn't really taken by anything until I noticed "Power of Love." Huey Lewis and the News?! Heck yeah! I got all ready to rock out 80's style, grabbed the mic, stood up, and was crushed to discover that their "Power of Love" was some bogus version done by a different band. Sad. I thought I could redeem myself from that debacle by singing "As," the old Stevie Wonder tune, but unfortunately their version was kicked up about half an octave and was clearly intended for a female vocalist. Oh well.

The most amusing part of the KTV experience was going to the bathroom. At one point early on Steven got up to go to the toilet and came back laughing about as hard as I've ever seen. I pressed him for an explanation and after much hesitancy, he explained that there was a man in the room giving massages. Well, it sure seemed a bit out of place but I figured that it couldn't be *that* funny. A little bit later in the night I decided to relieve the ol' bladder and Steven followed behind me. I heard him mutter something about a 50/50 chance before opening the door to the bathroom but didn't think much of it. I walked up to the urinal, unzipped my fly and glanced over my shoulder at the fellow working the room, apparently the masseuse. As I started taking care of business, the guy comes up right behind me and starts massaging my shoulders while I'm peeing! Well I started laughing uncontrollably because of the absurdity of the situation; On the one hand I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible but on the other, my laughter was slowing the process down, thereby making it that much funnier. I had heard of this phenomena of the pee-massage but I naively thought I would be able to avoid it. As Steven was chuckling at my predicament, he managed to translate a few of the phrases the guy was spitting out while massaging: "hey boss, looks like there are a lot of attractive ladies for you tonight," "seems like fun out there, huh boss," and "nice to relax with some beers and women, ay boss." I think that speaks for itself.

Saturday night was marked by a lack of any sort of backrub while urinating and by my discovery of an awesome jazz club. After a little bit of research I found a joint called the "Blue Note," which purported to have live music Thursday-Sunday nights. I decided to check it out and met a very entertaining Swedish women in the process. The place was pretty small and had a very welcoming vibe to it complete with comfy seats, small tables, an extensive drink list, and obscure indie movies from the 30's and 40's playing on a big screen behind the band. The quartet performing was pretty awesome and did a few of their own songs interspersed with some classics. It was the first real music I've seen here and I was definitely pleased.

There were a few random ex-pats in the bar but there was an almost equal number of Chinese. You could tell right away though that these weren't your average Guangzhou-ans. They looked like the pinnacle of hip with their clothes, hair, and demeanor. In other words, they were jazz cats to the core and it was pretty cool to see the similarities to the U.S. version of the same sort of person. I will definitely be going back to this place and someone else also recommended a different jazz club to me so hopefully I have much more to discover about the Guangzhou jazz scene.

I found myself wondering--how difficult is it to become a professional musician in China? As far as I know, the government doesn't provide any funding for musicians (especially of the jazz variety) so you're pretty much on your own. How do they get training? How much do they get paid for gigs? Is there a big underground scene of musicians attempting to make a living from their craft? I have no answers yet but I hope to find out in the next few months.