Our Tiger park group corralled a total of about 8 of us and we headed to a Cantonese-style restaurant near our hotel that I went to with some friends last year while in Harbin. We ordered so much food that we nearly couldn't fit it on the table, and spent the next two hours having an epic food and drink fest while telling stories and sharing pictures from the tigers and other activities from the day. Also, since it was REALLY cold out and we hadn't confirmed our plans for the night, we were doing our best to stay warm and full before venturing out into the city.
At about 11:00pm, we met another part of the crew back at our hotel, bundled up and headed through town. A few people had heard about performances and fireworks up the famous Zhōngyāngdàjiē, the main Central Avenue or Walking Street which runs down to the river (it's actually the longest pedestrian-only street in Asia, according to Wikitravel). As we were walking up to an area called "Euro Square", people were lighting off massive 3ft long sparklers and small fireworks while eating cotton candy from a streetside vendor. After arriving at the square, we were entertained by a truly Chinese phenomenon of the variety show sort. A boy band, some sort of bad comedy thing, techno music, people winning teddy bears. If you spend any time around a Chinese mall, this is a common thing nearly every day of the week in some form or another.
Anyways... as midnight approached, we had a big countdown to midnight which was followed up by cheering, sparklers, and fireworks. Since our crew had grown to about 20 people, we started to sing "Auld Lang Syne" with all the foreigners as we stood in a big circle, swaying to the terribly sung lyrics. After one round, Gavin, one of the teachers from our ML Elementary school (and the token Scot) yelled out that we should all grab some Chinese people and make our song circle bigger. So, we opened the circle, grabbed the closest locals we could find and dragged them into the circle and belted out "Auld Lang Syne" at the top of our lungs while being photographed/videotaped by pretty much everyone in the vicinity. It was a lot of fooling fun. The only thing to top this was watching a conga line on stage (I have no clue why) and then hearing "Mrak! You go!" coming from CG behind me and suddenly, I was leading our own conga line (both foreigners and Chinese folk) through the crowd of about 700 people in Euro Square. Sooo ridiculous. And sooo fun.
We ended up heading to a local establishment to do some dancing before going back to the hotel... our destination of choice was a(n) (in)famous place called Blue's Bar. Here's what the Harbin Travel Guide says on WikiTravel about this place:
"Blue's (布鲁斯酒吧) Dirty, crowded, and dangerous. Everything that is Harbin, Russians, Mongolians, Turks, Canadians, Brazilians, Koreans. Frequent staging ground for fights between Koreans and Mongolians or Russians fighting with Russians. The staff has also been known to get involved in fights or start them. Friday nights 10:30PM and afterward get really crazy when about 80% of Harbin's foreign newcomers head out to Blue's to party. Also, at 11PM you can buy a bottle of Vodka for ¥10, but it is devil water from Anhui has made many people go nuts and dance on the pole for hours."
I hope I don't need to explain that my experience wasn't NEARLY as exciting as all this, but it was still pretty fun.
The final story to come soon. For now, I'm off to work on my marking before report cards are due in the a.m. Much China love, all.
T
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