Scottish themed rodeo techno hiphop jazz bar, DRINK UP!

I LOVE the Chinese! They positively lust for life. In fact, they are bananas for it! And I just love people who look at the world that way.

Perhaps you've never heard the culture or people described particularly this way. And maybe it isn't every breathing Chinaman. And maybe it has something to do with the double-digit growth the economy here's been recently experiencing. But how can a people who invented fireworks and who have 133,235,258,987,217 different delicious ways to eat about every kind of edible thing you can imagine (meat on a stick is one of my faves) and still take the time to carve a cucumber into the shape of a dragon and stick it on top of your lobster sushi not be called completely crazy about living?

So now I am basically in the geographic center of China in a little city call Jingzhou. It's a very important city to the history of China because it's on the Yangtze River and because of its strategic geographic location at the center. My introduction to this grand little city this weekend was sublimely absurd and solidified my growing belief in the Chinese life lust. It all began with dinner and a Scottish themed rodeo techno hip hop jazz bar.

From Shanghai to Jingzhou, door to door: 7 hours. I'm a little dead from traveling but no, my knew host will hear none of that. He said, "maybe, we have dinner, make some friends, go out to a bar!" At dinner, more female soup (the boys had something else), my first of many treasured encounters with Hubei province food (so spicy, sooooo good), AND my introduction to Chinese liquor and the expression "gam bei," (drink up).

Don't be an honored guest at a dinner table with Chinese and Chinese liquor unless you can handle the taste of Ouzo (or something like it). There's a lot of drinking to your health. Also, if you want to be impressive, learn to your chopsticks well in advance. My stick wielding skills aroused so many stares at dinner that I finally demanded applause, since they all insisted on watching so closely any way (for me to mess up, I was pretty sure.. and 'cause I'm a southpaw, which is evidently bizarre).

Following dinner, my new friends brought me to a place that came so close to heaven on this earth I thought I might have been dreaming. Pinch me, there were Chinese people running around in kilts, walls covered in flat-screens playing weird music videos and rodeos and Formula 1, projected light shows dancing to the music, cold scotch & sodas, sparklers you could play with inside (is that a fire hazard?), glowing lollipops, more dragon-carvings of fruits, and kickin' music.

Then the shows started. We went from live jazz sax played with techno pop in the background, super-speed hip hop dancers dancing to some techno version of bagpipes, and then a pop-lock dancer dancing to techno.

At some point later in the night a chick got up a did a pop cover of Shanaina Twain and a dude did a cover a "West Virginia Mountain Mama." People were screaming. Really, the greatest thing might have been every one's enthusiasm. Genuine enthusiasm. I was screaming and crying inside for joy. Only sheer mental will power got me away from that place; I was ready to make a home on the cozy benches.

If anyone wants to start a business with me...

The rest of the weekend was so delightful it deserves its own undivided attention on another post... TBC...

But for the moment, in case you aren't convinced about the life lust thing: As I sit writing in my hotel room 15 stories above the street, 50 people are gathered below dancing a square dance (I swear, it's to the beat of my folk-y music) while in the distance fireworks explode (for apparently no reason) for the third time I've seen this weekend (more about which I will write later).

Lesson of the day: Life is delicious. Drink up.