One EPIC weekend in China - Sanming

Friday:  

I was talked into doing one more training session with my old class of White crane which by this stage only had 2 other guys in the class (as so many people where leaving for the winter). Got taught the rest of the Kata I had been learning and got some tarty photo’s of me and posing. So me, Rob, Billy and Samir (guys from the Kungfu camp) headed off to Sanming to meet up with Dan, Ronnie and Jack who had left earlier that day. Having spent 2 hours in the post office trying to send home Christmas  presents for the family in Taining I eventually had to give up as we had a bus to catch. This was to be the first of many linguistic challenges I was going to face in the coming days! We arrived at Sanming, got settled in the hotel then had some pre-drinks before heading out to the only bar in Sanming (in china they don’t really do bar’s, they just have restaurants and KTV Kareoki places). As usual us westerners where a magnet for Chinese curiosity and where swamped with people offering us beer and dice based drinking games. We all got pretty drink and when the entertainment singer busted out ‘it’s my life’ by Bon Jovi I got up on stage and sang with him J. We then went off to KFC for a bit (5-1) and then bumped into one of the other entertainers from the bar who was as camp as a row of tents at the street market. He dragged us over and offered us yet more beer and kept asking me and Rob “are you happy” which we later thought may have been “are you gay” but he’d taken the literal translation. Rob managed to get a date with his sister so we kept him sweet and played along and played the good old language game, which is basically where you say the most vulgar string of crap and swear words to someone who can’t speak English and watch as they smile and nod as you tell them you have a whale up your arse and want to sleep with their mother!

Saturday:

The next day we nursed a rather large hangover over some western food and various Café’s (Rob is obsessed/addicted to coffee and constantly strives to find decent expresso’s and Late’s in the middle of China!) before heading out again that night. Once again we had some pre drinks at the hotel before heading to a nightclub next door to the hotel that Dan had said was rubbish…. It wasn’t! Oh, in the hotel lobby there was this fat Chinese dude who was hammered drink be carried out (presumably had got pissed at the restaurant on the 5^th floor) and was vomiting all over the floor. Bloody hilarious, I wanted to take a photo of him passed out covered in sick but at this point I was on my own and didn’t want to get in a fight with his mates! So me, Samir and Rob went to this club and decided our mission for the night was to get the Chinese hammered and watch them drunk. They have this word called “gambey” which basically means cheers and if you say it you have to neck your beer. So the plan was to get these guys pissed by constantly shouting GAMBEY and then only drinking half the glass of beer but it massively backfired as me and Samir ended up obliterated (Rob doesn’t drink). We ended up in the adjacent KTV with like 30 Chinese guys who were buying us all beers and singing with us (and by us I really just mean me as once again I hogged the mic!). After singing and drinking for like 3 hours we then went back to the club by which time I couldn’t function at all. Apparently it massively kicked off in the club and there was a giant bar fight between what we think where two triad gangs and people where being bottled left right and centre. Now bear in mind that this massive fight was happening no more than 5 metres from me I didn’t see any of it and don’t remember any of it and was only told about it the next day! Not cool being that battered in a strange country so I’ll have to watch out for that in future.

After that we all pretty much headed to the hotel and the next day Rob and I where to head off to Guangzhou before I went to Vietnam…..