'In Da Club'

Those who have seen any of the photos that I've uploaded to Facebook since coming to China will probably have noticed there are not many pictures of cultural interest or even of my apartment and the school (they will be up in the near future). Instead I have mainly uploaded a fair few drunken images of myself stood with loads of people that you don't know, unless of course you are one of those people in which case you probably know a fair few of my fellow drunkards.

So why have I seemingly spent the last 3 and a half weeks getting drunk? Well I would like to say its down to the company I keep, and although in some cases that is true, it is actually down to the price. A can of beer here can be purchased for as little as 20p and it is possible to have a night out spending just a fiver! Ok so in some cases you may spend a little more but I have not spent more than £15 on a night out yet.

What do you get for £15? That's your entry into the club, plenty of drinks and the taxi home! On some nights, it is actually 'all you can drink', so you only have to worry about entry into the club (£3 for girls/£5 for boys) then go crazy at the free bar! Needless to say, I have spent many nights in China pissed! In some cases I have enjoyed a celebrity like treatment, being ushered to the front of a queue and allowed in for free (probably because I am Western, I am not complaining).

This is how much beer you can buy with a fiver!

The clubs themselves are a little crazy, in Chinese culture it is apparently frowned upon to show public affection toward a member of the opposite sex so I think that might be the reason why many young people come to the clubs, its a chance to touch each other up! And the guys seem to love the Western girls, many of the girls I know have had up to four Chinese guys dancing or hanging off them at some point!

As for the Chinese girls, well I have attempted to chat to a few and have found in most cases they don't speak English. Usually all they can say is their name, age, where they live and whether or not they like Coca Cola - all extremely important information of course but not the basis for a relationship. In the couple of instances that the girls do actually speak decent English, I have struggled to keep the conversation going due to cultural differences - no-one here has heard of David Beckham for example (not that David Beckham is commonly a topic of conversation for me, I am simply using an example of something everyone in the Western world is familiar with but few Chinese people would know about).

So my search for a Chinese wife continues..... Maybe I need to take the Mandarin lessons more seriously? Perhaps I could learn whilst sat in the pub drinking a ridiculously cheap beer?