A weekend in Shenyang (part two)

After a nice long sleep in Charlie's spare room it was time to get up and see what Shenyang had to offer.

First things first, I had to be revealed to Trent, who was unaware of me coming to stay for the weekend though he knew the girls were visiting. Charlie had arranged for us to meet him in a canteen near their school. It was quite a cool canteen, reminded me of a food court that might be found in any shopping centre in England. However, unlike it's English counterparts, this place offered value for money. We all got a plate full of food for 8RMB each (about 80p). Before we ordered the food though, we needed to meet up with Trent.

We were on the top floor of a building and he sent a text to Charlie to say he was on the lift, we decided that I would hide around the corner and once he had said hello to the girls I would come up behind him and surprise him. As I approached, Charlie said "hey Trent, there's your mate", and as he turned round he looked genuinely shocked to see me, a quick hug and hello and we all sat down to eat. This part of the story may seem a bit odd to some at home reading this, "why make such a big deal of seeing a person I had known for just two weeks?" I hear you ask, well being in China, I have found that many westerners become really close friends very quickly with other westerners, perhaps we just want to surround ourselves with people of similar backgrounds in what is an alien country, all I know is I think of a lot of the friends I have made here as family - okay, enough of the sentimental nonsense....

After eating we left the building and spent half an hour playing 'keep ups' with a Chinese toy, its hard to explain what it is exactly as I had never seen one before coming here, its basically some feathers attached to a weight with a rubber base. Its good fun and after we'd had enough we continued to explore.

It wasn't long before we found ourselves stood next to a mechanical bull/bucking bronco on the side of the street. Trent was keen to have a go, and the owners saw a great marketing opportunity (i.e. several westerners) and offered us all a free go. Trent climbed onto the bull and soon enough we were surrounded by Chinese people desperate to catch a glimpse of the foreigners making a fool of themselves, unfortunately for them Trent rode the bull until it ran out of steam. Cat fancied her chances too, so jumped up and like Trent before her, beat the bull. We were all ready to go when a couple of the girls challenged me to ride the bull, I didn't fancy it but having seen my Australian and American friends do so well, I thought I needed to do Britain proud..... I fell off after about 30 seconds.

A little later on in the afternoon, we heard from Dee via a text message that she was on the train from Beijing to Shenyang and would be joining us for a night out. Charlie had booked us tickets for a beer bus, like many things here in China it favoured the girls, who received free cocktails throughout the tour whilst the guys were allowed one warm can of beer in each bar, fantastic. We had a good night and ended up in a really cool club, were we drank plenty of alcohol and danced the night away.

Me and Trent at the club

The next day we caught the train, and in tribute to the journey down to Shenyang, Cat and I made it by mere seconds! The journey back was quiet as we all began to recover from the previous night. We did meet a Chinese girl though, who was visiting family, she told us she had been living in Swansea for ten years but had come back for a couple of weeks. She seemed to appreciate how hard it can be for foreigners in a strange land, she said (in her Chinese/Welsh accent) "it can be quite hard settling into a new country, isn't it?"

Overall, it was a good weekend, not sure how interesting this blog will be for those that weren't there though I am sure those who were with me will enjoy it. Just thought it would nice to mark the only time I left Beijing by writing about it!

L-R: Me (with my warm beer), Charlie, Nicola, Lauren, Dee, Erica and Cat