Revolutions and Birthdays

Photos

Mum and Dad came to visit me in Beijing recently, but this is a special little entry for the birthday booze-ups I've been going to.

My friend Vinny, the heart and soul of Beijing, was having his birthday party on the Saturday which happened to be the Guatemalan Revolution Day so his theme was "Viva La Revolution!" Totally fabulous, and slightly sensitive in the current political climate. China was currently having its 17th Party Congress Meeting in Beijing so security was tighter than Sid Vicious' pants. The only revolutions I had studied were the Chinese Revolution (and that was out) and the Russian Revolution so I decided to go as a Bolshevik soldier. And where better than the Russian Markets!

I got a fantastic almost blonde bob wig and a toy gun almost passable for Soviet-era but I couldn't not find the long communist coat "Mao coat" I called it, that many men still actually wear. It is still issued to soldiers by the Army here, but I couldn't find one for love nor money. I saw them everywhere in Ningxia, I was kicking myself I didn't get one there (not that I could have as they weight close to 5kgs). So without the coat I was really more of a Cold War Agent, and I channeled my old alter ego: Agent Micha.

The party was awesome and I met some very cool people, one of whom turned out to live in MY hutong! A few days earlier I had noticed a lao wai leaving the block at the other end of the complex and wondered if he lived there. I'd never seen another foreigner in my block before at all. And when, at the end of the party when we'd spent most of the night talking, I hopped on my bike and asked him where he lived and I nearly fell over when he told me (it was not the amount of booze I had consumed. Really). It was then I realised it was HIM I'd seen a few days earlier and I had shake my head; that was an amazing case of serendipity, even for Beijing. So we walked home (passed people preparing breakfast in the little dumpling restaurants!) and argued about whose hutong it actually belonged to, and who was going to be the one to move and give the other back the status of being the only foreigner there. I won, of course. He went to Kazakhstan a day later, probably never to return.

Also, Tash had her man visiting Beijing and it was the night of his birthday so in the spirit of I-don't-have-to-go-to-work-tomorrow, we had a fantastic night of "VnTs" (Vodka with no Tonic) at Huxleys, literally hundreds of photos between our 3 cameras and another fuzzy taxi ride home. It really was a great night, and I was still "enjoying" it when I woke up the next morning. Mum and Dad must think I'm such a booze hound because even though I've only had three big nights out in Beijing since I've been here, two of them were during Mum and Dads' trip. So concludes our first week in Beijing, exactly where we started it: having brunch, though this time it was me nursing the coffee cup like it was my tenacious grip on reality. God bless Grandma's Kitchen...