beer fest

When I returned from my latest adventure, Songyuan had transformed quite a bit. Apparently someone had flipped a switch and it was officially summer. Whenever a sale is happening or a new store is opening or something, once it's summer, the Chinese break out the crazy inflatable arches and lanterns, put up a stage and have some kind of singer or band or comedy act or something going on all day. Little vendors will set up all around and it's always entertaining. These kinds of things happen all the time, and it's slightly reminiscent of all of the festivals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (where I grew up) in the summer, so I dig it.

That weekend, there happened to be a car festival on the street in front of my school, a real estate expo behind and a bunch of other nifty outdoor stuff going on. The real excitement began the next weekend though, with the beer fest.

The beer fest consists of two large circus style tents full of picnic tables for eating and drinking. In the middle of the two large tents is a big space with a stage at one end and the beer vendor at the other. All around the perimeter are food vendors. The whole shebang kicks off around dinner times and goes until maybe 11pm every day. It's rumored to be there for two months, 100 days or all summer, it's not really clear. And it's literally 100 feet from the front door of my school.

A bunch of us foreigners went the first day and had a grand old time. Unfortunately, as is usually the case when the drinking begins at 5pm and dinner is for the most part neglected, things got a little out of hand for some of us. Most of us left and went to ktv after a while, but a few laggers stayed and then forgot they were going to leave. Drinking with the Chinese turned into wrestling with the Chinese, which turned into a friend of mine trying to tackle a Chinese man, missing and hitting the underside of a picnic table face first instead. Huge debacle ensued involving lots of blood, some vomit, my school owner and a story in the daily paper (luckily omitting his name, race and school).

Naturally, whenever we go to the beer fest, the Chinese stare but eventually want to drink with us and we have a good time. A couple of my friend went on stage and basically ktv'd Linkin Park the other day, which was pretty cool. There's generally a really big empty space right in front of the stage (the first day the police made everyone stand a good distance back and now everyone still does anyway), so the rest of us stood dead center; we were the biggest spectacle but it was kind of amazing.