Yet again I was the only white person there

On Saturday the 28th I went to a party that was advertised in the lounge of my dorm. It said there would be Chinese boys and girls there, I was suppose to meet them at the East Gate of the People’s University. So I cab it over there and meet some random Chinese guy and we walk to the restaurant. We were suppose to make dumplings and I had no plans for the evening.

We get to the restaurant, it is dead, but we are upstairs. I pay my 150 RMB then take my seat. I was waived to the other table, the one with the most girls. However there weren’t that many people and they didn’t seem to be college students. I never did find out what it was all about, no one volunteered that info, and I had no idea why they advertised in my dorm or why I was invited since I knew no one.

We had to wait a long time for someone to arrive, eventually there were three tables we had to move. One of our girls was made to move to a table with no girls, then I was made to move. All the time we just drank hot water and ate sun flower seeds.

At my new table were less people, but we had some of the organizers. There were many speaches, even I was called upon to make one. There was a banner which might have explained things. I took a picture to see if someone could decipher it. They might have been some sort of club with something to do with the internet, it never made sense. I was waiting for the food so I could go, then the Baiju was placed on our table.

It was 3 star Baiju which apparently is less strong than 5 star Baiju. I later found the exact bottle for sale at Walmart for like 20 RMB so it wasn’t that expensive of a liquor. Only about three of us said we would drink it. The ring leader as far as drinking was concerned at our table was Austin Pan. After many, many, bottoms up, thankfully of beer, I made sure and got his card.

After the Baiju arrived, food started to and of course beer. The cups were bigger than at another dinner I went to, so eventually slamming back 6-8 ounce glasses of beer got to me. Then people from other tables started showing up to drink with me.

One time I drank four ganbeis in a row. Including slamming back my glass of baiju because we briefly ran out of beer. All I remember on why I had to keep drinking was some guy kept yelling Chinese beautiful girl. As best as I can recollect, they used any excuse to make me drink.

I then went to the bathroom as I was not feeling well. After pulling myself together I go back to my old table, where of course I have to drink with them. No more frickin’ Baiju thankfully. I don’t know how much more I drank but I was trying to slow things down.

Eventually we start making dumplings, I had to force myself to the dumpling table, I actually knew how having done it once before. I was much drunker than I think I was in Xi’an. I only got to make two dumplings and we were out of stuffing, you always run out of stuffing before dough.

Of course people thought it was funny to put flour on my face which I tolerated again and even posed for what turned out to be my favourite picture of the night. My camera was commandered by someone and like 80 pictures were taken of people I didn’t know. A dude called me yesterday asking me to email them, I guess I will after posting this.

There were some drinking games and non drinking games and eventually dancing. There were also fireworks and we got to eat dumplings which were great at midnight after hours of drinking. They weren’t the ones we made and they were all pork dumplings no egg. I hate egg.

Once the dumplings arrived the booze seemed to disappear. There was some more dancing, I chose not to. Eventually I wanted to leave so I took my camera back and caught a black taxi home. I think I made it home before 3 am. It was an interesting evening, I was going to blog about it earlier but the internet still gives me grief and of course my blog is busted.

Updating old blog posts takes a lot of time

Amazingly this tale did not my make my top 10 blog posts about China list, but maybe after almost twenty years and having survived in China for years, including having an organ removed, few expats have that tale. I never did manage to become rich or instafamous but I wonder if some of the random Chinese people I met over the years were entirely on the level. I wonder if they knew I used to have Secret Level Clearance there is a forgotten tidbit from my career which used to be on my resume.

We’ll see if my career ever takes off. If you have any stories about eating dumplings at 3AM with entirely random Chinese people you can leave a comment below. Bonus points if you had an organ removed while living in China. I thought the larger versions of these photos may have been lost in various hard drive and memory card failures I experienced while living in China, but I found them. iPhoto I mean Apple Photos has changed a lot but I definitely have made backups over the years.

This entry was originaly posted on February 1st, 2006, it was last edited on May 21st, 2024 and is filed under: Rambles and tagged: Beijing, China, Networking.