Yet again I was the only white person there

On Saturday 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 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. 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 this posting.

There were some drinking 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 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.

Update: Amazingly this tale did not my make my top 10 blog posts about China list.

This entry was originaly posted on February 1st, 2006, it was last edited on February 9th, 2019 and is filed under: Asia and tagged: Baiju, Beijing, China.