When you’re an expat anywhere, you will inevitably fall in with crowds of fellow foreigners. After all, no matter where we are from, we are all sharing a common experience. This is magnified even further here in Asia, where all Westerners stand out and the cultural differences are universally jarring. (NOTE: Click on any of the pictures below to jump to my complete photo album from this night with lots more details. You can also see more videos from the night by visiting my YouTube channel here.)
So it is no surprise that I have met some really great fellow expats here and have been lucky enough to even call some of them friends. What has been a bit unexpected is the sheer number of French people about; or, at least, the sheer number of French people that I have found myself hanging out with.
Case in point: My attending of a double birthday party for two French expats: Pierre and Alexis. I’ve mentioned them before, when I met them during the Olympics and when I had my first night out as an expat. It had been a while since we had hung out (it has been a while since I have hung out with almost anybody, really) so it was a pleasant surprise to get an e-mail from Pierre’s girlfriend Ana with an invitation to a dinner party at a restaurant in Beijing’s Little Moscow (which I’d had no idea existed until this night). I asked her and she said that I could bring a couple of new people that I had met at a recent CouchSurfing meeting, one of whom happened to be French (of course!).
After getting a little lost with my companions, Lene & her roommate Caroline, we showed up at this over-the-top, borderline-gaudy restaurant. It was festive to be sure, but the décor was not so much Russian as it was “Random Western.” It looked like some Chinese had decided to make a place westerner-friendly and just threw anything that smacked of non-Asian culture into the walls. Frankly, it is par for the course in China, so I hardly notice it anymore.
But then things started getting really, really surreal.
As we sat down to dinner at a long table, I counted 20 of us in total: 18 French, 1 Dane (Lene) and me. That was kind of weird. Then, the lights went down and out onto the dance floor in front us came a bevy of scantily-clad dancing girls!
The acts continued with acrobats…
More dancing…
More acrobats…
And a final dance number that I really loved, with the whole troupe dressed in communist-era uniforms, doing some impressive traditional Russian dancing. Being a child of the Cold War, it really resonated with me and I couldn’t help but record some of it.
After the dancing, the food came out: Plates with piles of beef, chicken and sausage heaped onto them. Everybody just started stabbing things and eating, all the while, bottles of vodka got passed around and toast after toast was raised in honor of the birthday boys and whatever else struck the toasters’ fancy at that moment. Half of the time I didn’t even know what I was toasting to; every 5 minutes half of the table would stand up and shout, raise their glasses and down a shot or two. Being seated in the middle of the group, I got caught up in this… a lot.
As if this was not crazy enough, after a while the lights on the dance floor came back up and music started playing. Was it Russian? Chinese? Techno? Nope. Try Salsa. Really. In short order the dance floor was filling with inebriated revelers and even I couldn’t resist it for very long.
So there I was: In a Russian restaurant, at a birthday party with 18 French people and a Dane dancing to Salsa music in BEI-fucking-JING!
How is this my life?
Needless to say I had an amazing time. I got to re-connect with some friends and make some new ones. I drank vodka like a pro, danced a little salsa, got to practice the (very) little French that I know, and I had some fabulous sausage. My only question is when can I do this again?
November 25th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
This is a great post.
I miss you!
November 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Nice comments !
Thanks for coming, it was great !
To answer your question, next time: For your birthday !?!;)
November 27th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Jas: I miss you too!!
Anne: Don’t think for a minute that we won’t be having a huge blowout for my birthday, and that you will simply HAVE to come! Unfortunately, this won’t come around until next September, and there is no way that we’re waiting that long before we get together again!