10tonfunk

The opening of some sort of design store we got invited to by a woman that showed us a couple of apartments. What these guys are staring at with such interest is Beijing’s only male belly dancer. Actually, he may not be Beijing’s only male belly dancer but he’s definitely one of the few. A skinny Chinese guy with pointy hips and long beaded extensions which he would whip around dramatically while peeling his lycra-ed self off the ground from various bridges and executing various frightening pelvic maneuvers. If you managed to duck the helicopter rotor-like beads you would definitely get damaged by the jutting hip bones. It’s at least equally possible that they are staring at the belly dancer’s backup crew who are in fact female and, although Chinese, have much more going on in the hip section. Another classic bringing-the-art-to-the-people moment. Funk for the folks, male belly dancing for the lao baixing.

In almost three years in China, I have never been as frustrated with the Chinese masses as I was at the Shanghai aquarium. Steph and I went there before a flight back to Beijing. A flight that turned into a multi-hour riot at the airport, culminating with us all being locked on the plane. And then forced to get off.

The kids pounded on the tanks containing rare species, emblazoned with bilingual warnings + pictograms beseeching visitors not to pound their fat, greasy litte palms all over the goddamn glass. Parents shooed kids under barriers so they could photo them near the shark tanks. Children stuck their hands into the tanks, which, unfortunately, were not full of pirahnas. The world’s longest underground sea tunnel, 155 meters underground and 50 or so meteres long, apparently required No Smoking signs.

I began to think extremely dark thoughts about people-eating fish and the obvious inability to follow instructions manifesting itself in calamitous ways later in life. Not thoughts to be proud of.

Ultimately, the airport and aquarium experiences taught me an important lesson: while most countries are right not to follow America in arming its citizenry, and indirectly, the citizenry’s children (a gun in your house is 32 more times more likely to kill a member of your family then an intruder), the use of Tasers should be much more common in China. I’m thinking of opening an import company. Don’t taze me Chou?