Let's sing!!

Yesterday saw 'typical' Chinese atmospheric conditions... so much smog that you can look directly at the sun at mid-day without flinching. You can literally "see" the air you breathe, and the streets were filled with all sorts of pungent smells (cabbage, sewers, pineapples...) I grew up in the most polluted town in South Africa (it was THE coal-mining area for the country), but even that was nothing compared to the yellow-grey mist that is the air here.

Not to be deterred though: we went to get our nails painted with TINY brushes in delicate designs. An hour and a half later, my feet look like they should be put in a glass case in a museum. After lunch I attended a Song of Songs study, which was quite unlike any approach to the book I've seen but has given me much food for thought. And last night I went with a whole group of my former students to a place they call 'the happy pig', where two giant pork shoulders were served to us on a platter, and each of us were given a plastic glove to wear as we pulled the pork off... I think plastic gloves should be regulation additions with many more meals!

Our final destination was the local entertainment hotspot: a karaoke bar. We rented our own small karaoke room, and amid much laughter belted out some of the most loved, and most horrendous tunes. Local Chinese people kept wanting to visit our room from other rooms to have drinking competitions, and the teachers here demonstrated an amazing ability to decline and still 'save face', since 'losing face' is such a grievous thing to do here.

The funniest was the music videos they make to go with the music: random and cheesy! The video to "Right here waiting for you" featured a group of muscular men all posing in the positions of famous sculptures (e.g. Rodin's Thinker)... a strange case of cultural dissonance. Another song had two women in denim shorts, boots and cropped tops in various scenes of riding and grooming horses. The cherry on the top was a close up of these women cleaning out the horses' noses... I couldn't breathe for laughter.