More Wuhan Night LIfe!!

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Our busy weekends continued this week as we took in a show at the Wuhan Music College on Friday night in a beautuful theatre and carried on Saturday night watching our friend, Colin, debut in China with his band, Man Made Lake, at a small packed venue, the Folk Hand.

Every year, a show takes place at WMC for the foreigners in the city. It was great last year and this year the tradtion continued. Over the course of the evening we were entertained by a variety of Western and Chinese opera, tradtional and classical music, acrobatics, martial arts, and dancing. Wuhan has a burgeoning performing arts culture, which we have had the pleasure of watching over the last two years. We have seen an incredible amount of talented individuals performing in various parts of the city, including our own students at the high-school. There is a great balance between Western muscic and traditional and contemporary Chinese music. and both seem to be appreciated by all ages.

As Nancy and I headed out to the club last night to see Colin and his band, the taxi driver started babbling away in Chinese, which as always we understood very little of. We told him where we wanted to go and he proceeded to start saying something about Christmas as far as we could understand. Although it is pretty much a non-issue around here, there are Christmas decorations here and there around the city and most people are interested in the holiday and how we are going to celebrate it. As we drove along, the driver started humming Jingle Bells and we continued to chat in Chinese and with our hands. We are getting pretty good with charades in these situations. We started singing Jingle Bells in English and he got a big kick out of it.

You never know when you jump into a cab (sometimes pushing somebody out of the way who is trying to beat you to it), what the drivers are going to be like. Most of the time they are super friendly and try to chat. Others turn on their radios and ignore you as they chat away on their CBs. On rare occasions, the cabbie speaks a little Engliish and loves to practice it with you as he drives along, teaching you a little Chinese along the way. Anyway, I digress. Back to the show.

On Saturday night a group of our staff jammed into the Folk Hand, a small basement club about ten minues away by taxi. The whole place was about half the size of our school staff room, including the bar and the stage. The three piece band, Our Way Out, opened with a few songs, with a Green Day sound. Before they finished, the room was pretty packed with young people about half my age, ok a third my age lol, mostly friends of the band. Colin and Lisa are our neighbours and Lisa teaches at my school, so there was no way I was going to miss it! It was loud, energetic, smoky and everone had a rockin good time.

Anyway, I will let the pictures and videos speak for themselves. This week, pot-luck Christmas day dinner party at one of the teachers houses. She is cooking the turkeys and the group is bringing the rest. Yes, her place is big enough to fit a few dozen of us for Christmas dinner, but more on that at the end of the week. Two days later on Sunday night, we are going to Riverdance. One of the original cast and crews are touring China and Wuhan is one of their stops.

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