Qiandaohu Karaoke - Going Local!

Maybe it should be Going Loco rather than Going Local - this was quite possibly the funniest night in China so far... well, apart from racing around the Xi'an Sofitel in my bathrobe at 1am... natch.

Take a group of tourist/students, plonk them into a very basic hotel in the middle of nowhere China, suggest they "stay in and sing Karaoke in the hotel bar" and watch them make a run for it! Not happy with going to bed at 8pm following another wonderfully authentic Chinese dinner, we elected to drag our chaperones out with us to explore downtown Qiandaohu. From street opera to all-night-dried-fish-shops... Qiandaohu has it all! Including the best thing since sliced bread - a big square where the entire city's population seemed to convene for a Chinese version of line dancing. Physical exercise and flirting in one - the ladies dance in the middle and the gentleman watch them avidly. Even at 10pm at night, kids were still playing and hundreds of women were out dancing the routines.

Being a total coward in public situations, I chickened out and followed the moves from the sideline while Sandra, Alessandra and Ham Fong actually joined in with varying degrees of success. Funnily enough - none of us spoke enough Chinese to understand the directions being called out or to ask what was going on, but dance transcends even language barriers and one of the leading matriarch types came over to dance alongside Sandra and exclaim in Chinese how good she was at picking it up? Or so I assume from the smile... she didn't spell out the Pin Yin :) Sorry Pak - absolute BLINDING opportunity for a first and I just let it slip right through my fingers...

Of course there were pictures, but since I was taking part (admittedly on the sidelines) I didn't take any myself and the owners of said cameras absconded with the evidence...maybe its all for the best. :)

Following the 11pm mini-workout we finally made it to Karaoke. Some of the more "advanced" students attempted to sing in Chinese with admirable effects... being a HUGE fan of S.H.E. (Taiwanese 3-girl popgroup) I knew the lyrics (chorus) to "I.O.I.O." and did a duet with Wendy-school-coordinator-extraordinaire on "Superstar"... with Wendy doing the Chinese vocals aided with my chorus of "you are my superstarrrrrrrr". Funny for me, but torture for the rest! Though they were all considerably sloshed so probably didn't notice additional atonal screeching from yours truly...

Luckily our departure time the next morning was only at 8am... so we were assured of at least 5 hours sleep before rafting the next day. Oops. :/