Halloween Weekend

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Vox is probably the most popular expat bar/club in Wuchang. It's apparently where Wuhan's underground music scene all goes down. I guess Wuhan doesn't have a huge underground music scene : ) Usually Chinese people show up for the concerts and then at around midnight the drunken expats start coming in. I saw that a local punk band was playing on Friday and I didn't have plans so I thought I would check it out. Turns out it was a Celtic punk band! Awesome!! Also (probably because they are local), the club was packed and everyone was going crazy. People had hands with the "rock" symbol up in the air and firsts and stuff. Also there was a red banner like the communist party banners about "creating a stable and harmonious society" except it said "rock and roll blahblahblah." Whether it is a physics conference or a punk concert, people seem to be really into the red banners. Right above the red banner were a bunch of people on the balcony waving anarchy flags! Also a girl jumped up on stage at one point to call attention to her t-shirt that read, "I don't need sex - the government fucks me every day." The band was pretty epic. They played the bagpipes and the pan whistle and all that good stuff and they even had a song called "Wuhan, Wuhan" which made us all go wild! So it seems reasonable to me that the descendants of Irish immigrants living in Boston might want to start a Irish punk band, but I am not sure how it occurred to these Wuhan kids.... they were pretty rockin' though! I also participated in a mosh pit for the first time. The floor was so slippery with sweat and beer I kept falling down. Some people shook their beers up and sprayed it all over us. Got bruises all over my arms and legs, but thoroughly enjoyed myself and now that I'm all healed up, I would do it again! Turns out I really like shoving people.

The next night my friend Sylvie (that is her French name because she is a French major... forgot her Chinese name oops!) from Chengdu and her friend came over to my apartment to show me how to cook Sichuan food. They were sooo sweet and showed up to meet me with a bouquet of beautiful flowers! Gosh! We bought ingredients including some live fish that pathetically flapped itself to death on the ride home. I used to not like seafood, but now I am willing to eat whatever. Sylvie and her friend were super pro and I basically watched uselessly as she expertly gutted the fish and prepared the vegetables and whatnot. The food was delicious of course and we had a nice chat. Sylvie (and basically everyone here really) is super patient with my Chinese.

Aaand the night after that, my labmates came over to my apartment to celebrate both Halloween and Zhou Lin's (our seniormost group member and now newly-minted Ph.D.!) birthday. We went a bit farther a large produce market in Wuhan University area because apparently the food was fresher there. Zhou Lin's fiance came too. Yang Wei did most of the cooking with some assistance from Xiao Cui on the fish. They were concerned that I had been recently only boiling and steaming my food, so Yang Wei narrated what he was doing so that I could make it on my own! Food was delicious of course. Then fellow Americans Diana and Craig came by for watermelon carving!! My labmate Tang Biao was awesome and accompanied me on a wild goose chase for suitable Halloween pumpkins. The pumpkins here are brown-colored, thick-skinned and oblong so we gave up and bought mini watermelons instead. The result: some mighty fine jack-o-lanterns. Finally we all ate cake, made merry, and wished Zhou Lin a happy 28th!

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Photos

Jack-O-Lanterns
... and scary Yang Wei.