Last. Night. Was. Ridiculous. After the entire group passing out at around 9:30pm on Friday night (I slept from 8pm-8am), we decided that we needed to go out hard last night. I had heard really great things about a specific area of town called Sanlitun, specifically a bar called Vic’s right in front of the Worker’s Stadium. Along with everything else in China being absurdly cheap, pre-gaming is like a dream. No alcohol permit is needed to sell, so every shop possible sells whatever you could need, and domestic drinks are absurdly cheap. Beers are around $.30/12 oz can, and their liquor (bei jiu!) is about $.50 for a flask-sized bottle. I’ve found that I like “jing wine”, which tastes like a fiery whiskey (70 proof) and I hate ergoutou (92 proof), which smells like rubbing alcohol and tastes worse, with the consistency of corn syrup.
We made it downtown thanks to Yeong, who wrote down the Chinese name for where we were headed on pieces of paper for each of the 3 cabs we had to take. We hopped around a bit before meeting up at Vic’s, with new friends in tow—some Germans, some other Germans, some Australians, and a homeless kid. Somehow, half of us got in free (including yours truly, which was nice for recovering from money stolen), and just danced there until the wee hours of the morning.
Waking up this morning was not the first thing I wanted to be doing, but we had to go to a Chinese village so up I got. We took a bus to find this place in the mountains, a place which apparently changes so much our driver who was just at this place took a while to find his way there. We were here to see what it was like for a Beijing village suburb—the government pays to keep them here, farming nuts and just subsisting, pretty much. They make just about as much as the people we visited in the slums, but lived a much nicer life. Their houses had two rooms. They did have exercise equipment, cars, and soon they’ll even have internet. We had a little Q&A session with one of the members of the village council, which was very informative, and I thoroughly enjoyed the provided massage chair while we all talked. Lunch was provided by the village, and was delicious—a half a chicken (legs included), green beans, fresh baked bread, and other local delicacies. We opted not to go hiking in the hot, arid countryside, and now will have a lazy Sunday to enjoy. It’s much needed—lots of go go go recently, and it’ll pick up soon with a very busy week this week. I can’t wait.
